Sommerleigh Pollonais, Senior Writer
Plot: Cassandra Webb is a New York metropolis paramedic who begins to demonstrate signs of clairvoyance. Forced to challenge revelations about her power, she needs to safeguard three young women from a deadly adversary who wants them destroyed.
I can totally picture the pitch meeting for Madame Web going something like this.
Exec 1: “Let’s make a movie about Madam Web.”
Exec 2: “Who?!”
E1: “She’s a character in the Spider-Verse that even Spider-Man fans don’t care about.”
E2: “Then why would anyone want to see a movie about Madame Web?”
E1: “Well, James Gunn made the Guardians of the Galaxy popular, and nobody knew anything about them.”
E2: “…But we don’t have James Gunn.”
E1: “No worries. How hard could it be to make lesser-known characters nobody cares about with strange powers that are difficult to conceptualise visually interesting to watch? And if all else fails there’s always ChatGPT!”
Yeah, it turns out Sony still hasn’t learned from their past mistakes and Madame Web may just be the worst comic book movie brought to the big screen since Catwoman played basketball to a hip hop tune.
Dakota Johnson – who at this point should really look into getting a new agent (she reportedly fired her talent agency after the trailer came out) – plays Cassie Webb, an EMT with a chip on her shoulder due to her coming up through foster care. On the job one day Cassie “dies” saving a car crash victim and after she’s revived discovers she has the ability to see the future. Not only that but she finds herself forced to give a damn when three young women, all future superheroes in the making, are marked for death by some guy in a discount Spider-man costume he found in the bargain bin of his local Walmart.
You could probably tell by now I thought this movie was terrible. I’m trying to find positive things to say but boy do they make it hard! Dakota Johnson is woefully miscast as the titular character and not just because Madame Web is usually portrayed as an elderly woman but also, like her role in the Fifty Shades movies, she seems completely lost as to what her character’s motivations are. I don’t blame her though because, like the Fifty Shades of Crap movies, the writing here is beyond lazy and uninspired.
Origin stories are always difficult to make interesting, doubly so when fans have seen numerous iterations of the same story (think Batman). But that excuse doesn’t work here because, as I mentioned earlier, most people have NO IDEA who this character is! This meant director S.J. Clarkson and the three writers involved (three!) could’ve done anything they wanted with these characters and presented audiences with something fresh and fun. Instead, what we got was a 10-year old’s idea of a superhero story. Then again, a 10-year-old would’ve had more imagination.
The action sequences (when they occur, because this movie is more talk and less everything else) are laughably bad. Badly shot, badly edited, and just bad all around. The villain Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) is even less memorable than the lady with the hammer in The Marvels (I refuse to look up her name because that movie has already taken enough from me) and the trio of future heroes Julia (Sydney Sweeney) Anya (Isabela Merced) and Mattie (Celeste O’Connor) are so forgettable and underdeveloped, I was sure they were leftovers from a rejected CW television show that never aired.
Worse than Morbius, worse than Venom 2 (I enjoyed the first one) hell, it’s even worse than Halle Berry’s Catwoman, because at the very least that movie made me laugh for how awful it is. This just made me sad and more than a little angry because I spent money to see this first draft disguised as a finished movie. All I can say is, I’m sorry I don’t have Madam Web’s ability to see into the future. I could’ve saved myself some money.
Sommer’s Score: 3 out of 10
Have you suffered through Madame Web? Did you actually find things to enjoy in it? Do share in the comments. And you can suffer through more reviews of terrible superhero films below:
Sommerleigh of the House Pollonais. First of Her Name. Sushi Lover, Queen of Horror Movies, Comic Books and Binge-Watching Netflix. Mother of two beautiful black cats named Vader and Kylo. I think eating Popcorn at the movies should be mandatory, PS4 makes the best games ever, and I’ll be talking about movies until the zombie apocalypse comes. Double Tap Baby! Read More