Review: Madame Web
While Sony’s Spider-Man Universe™ has given us the absolute highs of the animated Spider-Verse, it’s also given us slop like Morbius and, somehow, Madame Web is even worse. In fact, it’s one of the worst superhero/comic book movies ever made.
Dakota Johnson plays Cassandra Webb, an EMT in New York City in 2003 who, after nearly dying after being trapped in a car that plunges over a bridge, begins to have visions that she slowly realizes are glimpses of the future. She becomes entangled with three young women (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor) who are being hunted by Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), a wealthy…something or other who has Spider-Manesque abilities and shares Cassie’s ability to see the future. Sims has a vision that the trio of girls will become powerful superheroes and kill him, so he’s determined to kill them first. Pretty much everything about the plot is terrible but especially the villain. There is literally no setup for Sims, why he goes to such lengths to collect a rare spider in 1973 with Cassie’s mother in the Amazon (presumably it gave him his powers? The movie doesn’t really tell you), where he got all his money, who is computer hacker assistant is, nothing. I complained last year about The Marvels villain but at least you understood where she was coming from and her motivations. Sims is arguably the worst villain in the history of comic book movies and the sour cherry on top is the truly hideous ADR dubbing for every line of dialogue. I’ve read Tahar Rahim is actually a respected actor but you would never believe that watching his performance here.
The bad performances extend to most Spider-Women as well, although it’s most likely more the truly atrocious script and the direction that is failing them. Johnson acts like she’s being held at gunpoint to perform and delivers lines in a manner that is just barely above fully tranquilized and she and Sweeney seem to be competing to see who can deliver the flattest, most boring performance. There are a few rare instances where Johnson’s trademark “so over this” sarcastic acting style works, like when she is eager to dump the trio of future Spiders off as soon as possible early on or when she’s trapped at Mary Parker’s (Emma Roberts) baby shower, but it’s mostly just terrible and flat. Cassie and the girls also have some of the most howlingly bad backstories in superhero movie history, from mental asylum moms to billionaire parents which culminates in Cassie needing to take a side trip to Peru in the middle of everything going on to get answers about her past. The only cast members who seem to be giving any sort of life to their characters are Celeste O’Connor and Adam Scott, who is playing a younger Ben “Uncle Ben” Parker, which ties him into the pathetic attempts to make this also a Spider-Man prequel movie without saying “Peter” or “Spider-Man” (apparently there were more explicit connections but those were cut out).
The action, what little there is, is also extremely bad, with the entire movie suffering from bizarre snap-zooms and attempts to maybe make things feel “handheld” and “grounded” but it’s jarring and noticeably terrible. If you were coming explicitly to see some costumed superhero action, you would be sorely mistaken, as the trio of future Spider-Women are only in costume in brief visions of the future and they never get even a hint of their future power unlocked here. Sony seemingly gambled and lost big time, that this would be a launching pad for a female Spider team franchise, so everything that would possibly be cool or interesting is going to be in the “sequel” that will most likely never happen based on Madame Web’s box office performance. Cassie unlocks a somewhat cool power in the climax and it definitely would have given this movie a boost if the girls got the beginnings of their powers and they all fought Sims together.
Madame Web is easily one of the worst superhero movies, and just movies in general, ever made. Other Sony efforts like Morbius were bad but at least it was uniquely bad with some hilariously terrible story beats and Matt Smith devouring scenery. Madame Web is the worst kind of bad, which is boringly bad, with not even anything to point at and laugh at because of how ridiculous it is. It’s a slog to wade through and hopefully, this is one step closer to the end of whatever hell Sony is trying to do with their live-action universe of Spider adjacent content.