Why madame, what big webs you have!
Madame Web is an ugly, excruciating, and incomprehensible waste of a film — the cinematic equivalent of excrement if there ever was one. Not a single thing worked in this movie. Every single frame was rancid from cringey dialogue, incomprehensible editing, God-awful visual effects and performances so flimsy and weak that stick figures would have been more convincing. Its failure runs so deep and so thoroughly that I’m more aghast than I am angry. How can you stay mad at something that’s so pathetic?
The movie follows Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson), a paramedic who learns that she has precognitive abilities that allows her to see into the future. During one of her visions, she sees a man in a spider costume start killing these innocent teenage girls on a train. His name is Ezekiel Sims (Tahir Rahim), and he has a premonition that these three teenagers will become Spider-Women in the future and kill him. How does he know this, and why do they want to kill him? The movie never explains either because it doesn’t expect you to, well, think, while watching.
This movie is so baffling to me for several reasons, but let me start with one of the more obvious ones — absolutely nobody asked for nor wanted a Madame Web movie. Out of all of Spider-Man’s cast of characters, Madame Web’s role is minimal at best, and her appearances are limited to just a handful of TV shows and video games. She does not have the notoriety to justify a cameo in a Spider-Man movie, let alone getting her own movie.
Still, I always say the idea isn’t what matters most — it’s how it’s executed that makes the difference. Several obscure comic book characters have made their big-screen debuts over the past several years, including Thor, Ant-Man, Shazam, Shang-Chi, and The Suicide Squad. All of those movies were successful because they had a deep-rooted love for these characters and they understood how to translate their stories to the big screen. Ten years ago, I predicted that Guardians Of The Galaxy was going to be the MCU’s biggest flop and thought it was Marvel’s dumbest idea to date. Then just last year, the Guardians deeply moved me and made me sob my eyes out in their third and final movie. Because of this, I will never dismiss a premise outright, even if it’s a bad one. It’s all about how you approach it.
The problem is Madame Web had no approach. No, I don’t mean that it was poorly executed — I mean it had no execution, period. So much is wrong with this movie all at once that it’s hard to break down what exactly went wrong, because EVERYTHING went wrong. It’s like trying to look through a kid’s vomit in the cafeteria — you can see everything that went into him, but it’s harder to see what exactly made him sick.
The biggest problem by far is the film’s writing. I know, surprise surprise that the writers of Morbius turned out yet another dumpster fire. But somehow, Madame Web is even worse. At least Morbius had hilariously bad moments, like when Matt Smith was twerking in the bathroom or when Jared Leto says “I am Venom.” Madame Web’s writing is just as bad as Morbius’ and even less fun, which is really saying something.
I could talk about how God-awful the dialogue is in this movie, like when Cassie tells a young Ben Parker “What, you don’t want to get shot in Queens?” or when another character absolutely BUTCHERS the “with great power comes great responsibility” line. Instead I would like to focus on the characters, because the character work here is horrendous. All of the pre-Spider-Women are brain-dead nitwits who are more concerned about flirting with random guys than they are about avoiding the murderous Spider-killer hunting them. Ezekiel Sims lacks any sort of intimidating presence and feels like he can be shoved aside in the subway. And Cassie is just straight-up unlikeable. Instead of being protective of these girls once she realizes they’re in danger, she immediately tries to pawn them off, saying “You’re your parents’ problem now.” Are you kidding me??? Why are you a paramedic if you don’t give a rip what happens to other people? You’d be better off being a slimy corporate executive, or perhaps more appropriately, a Warner Bros. or Sony Pictures studio head.
The most frustrating thing is that I’ve seen these actors in better movies — they can act, and they can act well. Dakota Johnson was a marvel in Black Mass, Our Friend, and Peanut Butter Falcon and shows that she can display depth and drama when given a good part. Tahar Rahim was nominated for both a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for playing the lead in The Mauritanian and “The Serpent.” But Sydney Sweeney is sadly the absolute worst of them all. This is an Emmy-nominated actress who’s put out one emotional performance after another with the likes of “The Handmaiden’s Tale,” “The White Lotus” and “Euphoria.” Yet here, she’s so clueless and ditzy that she couldn’t even pull off a cameo in “Degrassi.”
And sadly, all of the film’s technical elements are just as awful as the writing and acting is. The CGI is so obviously cartoonish that it looks like PS3-era video game graphics. The sound dubbing is so jarring and awkward that I’m still not entirely convinced the actors didn’t deliver their lines on-set. The editing is so choppy and incomprehensible that it makes Transformers look Oscar-worthy by comparison. I’m not exaggerating when I say that nothing worked in this movie. Say whatever you will about Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, or even Morbius — at least those movies had individual elements that were technically impressive, whether it was the music, the action, or the visual effects. Madame Web has none of that. It. Has. Nothing.
Yet as terrible as this movie is, I don’t want to blame the cast, who feel more like victims to the script rather than its stars. I don’t want to blame the film’s director S.J. Clarkson, who prior to this CGI abomination had an illustrious TV career directing for shows such as “Heroes,” “Dexter,” “Orange Is The New Black,” “Jessica Jones,” and more recently “Succession.” I don’t even want to blame the film’s writers which, sure aren’t good, but they’ve previously written projects that are at least watchable.
No, for a stinker this bad, I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the film’s producers, especially Transformers and G.I. Joe producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. Because at the end of the day, it’s their responsibility for how poorly this turned out. Whether they were too involved with this film’s production or they weren’t involved at all doesn’t matter — somebody left the wheel in the driver’s seat unattended. And as a result, this train wreck crashed into all of us poor unsuspecting moviegoers.
Madame Web represents everything wrong not just with superhero movies, but with movies period. When people say they don’t like big-budget blockbusters, they aren’t talking about legitimately good movies like Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, or John Wick: Chapter 4. They’re talking about movies like this — cheap, insincere, incomprehensible hogwash that would fail a fifth-grader in their English lit class, let alone an entire film production. Madame Web clearly does not have the gift of foresight, because if she did, she would have seen how terribly her story would have turned out and fired her agent ahead of time.
DAVID DUNN 