LOS ANGELES, June 26 -- Every critic who screened Supergirl agreed on one thing: Milly Alcock is extraordinary. What they could not agree on was whether the film around her was worth seeing, and that split is now the central problem for James Gunn's DC Universe, which opens its second chapter today with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 57% and opening-weekend projections that have slid nearly $15 million below where they started.

The stakes are precise. Superman opened in July 2025 to $218 million domestic, giving Gunn's rebuilt DCU the legitimacy it needed after the chaos of the Snyder era. Supergirl was supposed to sustain that momentum into a second season. A $40 million domestic opening, the current consensus among tracking firms, would no...