I went in wanting to love it. I came out sorting the wreckage into three piles. So here we go — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good
Milly Alcock is not the problem. She’s actually pretty good. Give this woman a real script and she could carry the whole franchise on her back. You can see the character trying to break out from underneath the writing, and every time she gets a real moment, she nails it. That’s a performance, not a paycheck.
Ruthie steals the entire movie. The kid sidekick is exceptional. Great character, real story, and the young actor gives her genuine heart — smart, capable, quick on her feet, never the clumsy tagalong the script could’ve reduced her to. Every scene she’s in gets better because she’s in it. Frankly, she deserves her own spin-off before half the adults on screen.
Some visuals are spectacular. A handful of shots are genuinely gorgeous, and a few of the fight scenes rip. You can tell somebody in the art and stunt departments cared. When the movie lets the camera breathe and the punches land, it works.
The ending. I’ll leave it vague, but I have to admit — I loved it. It’s the one stretch where everything the movie has been fumbling actually clicks into place. If the whole film had earned that ending, we’d be having a very different conversation.
The Bad
Lobo as comic relief. Fine. Serviceable. He gets a few laughs. But the jokes are lame — like someone handed a writers’ room a bullet list that just said “make him funny” and this is what came back. He’s a decent sidekick. He is not the Lobo people were hoping for. It’s a mashup of bad dad jokes rolling into a pale Aquaman impression, and I genuinely don’t understand what the writers thought they were doing with him.
The Guardians-of-the-Galaxy-ification of DC. Every new DC movie apparently has to have the same quippy, self-aware, in-the-middle-of-a-fight-crack-a-joke rhythm now. Guardians earned that tone. This is a cover band trying to catch the same spark and mostly hitting the wrong notes. If this is the house style going forward, we’re in for a long few years.
A script that keeps tripping its own cast. Alcock is trying. Ruthie’s actor is thriving. The rest of the movie keeps handing them dialogue that pulls them back down. You can feel the ceiling the writing puts on everyone.
The Ugly
The villain. Just… the villain. Completely and utterly forgettable. A bargain-bin Mad Max reject — or maybe a Waterworld leftover — reheated for space. Waterworld space pirates. That’s the pitch. No plot, no direction, no motivation, no menace. Cookie-cutter thug in a costume. I could not tell you this character’s name, goal, or reason for existing five minutes after the credits, and I don’t think the movie could either.
The villain’s crew is worse. Somehow. A whole faction of bad guys with nothing to say, nothing to want, and nothing to do except stand around waiting to get punched. Antagonists are supposed to give the hero something to push against. These ones give her something to bounce off of, once, and then vanish.
The Verdict
There’s a good movie hiding inside this one. Milly Alcock is ready. Ruthie is a gift. The visuals occasionally remember they’re in a superhero film. The ending is a real ending.
But the villain is a black hole of charisma, the humor is trying to be a franchise it isn’t, and Lobo landed somewhere between “fine” and “please stop.” Worth seeing for the highs. Just don’t go in expecting the whole movie to earn them.
Rating: the ending saved it.
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