Madame Web is another film that is supposedly in the same universe as the other Spider-Man movies from Sony. It’s nothing more than an arbitrary vehicle to start a new franchise potentially. It doesn’t work.
The movie’s already been declared one of the worst comic book movies ever made and to some extent, I can definitely attest to that. There are plenty of reasons to put it on the same level as, say, Batman and Robin, Catwoman, Elektra, and the 2015 reboot of Fantastic Four.
It stars Dakota Johnson as Cassie Webb, a paramedic living in New York in 2003. Thirty years prior, her mother Constance (Kerry Bishe), a researcher down in the Amazon has discovered a new species of spider that has the ability to heal people. She’s betrayed by her partner, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), because he wants the spider for himself.
Constance is left for dead until she’s rescued by a mysterious group of people with spider-like abilities of their own. They have a spider that bites Constance, and she gives birth to Cassie, who has unique powers. Constance dies.
Cassie continues her job as a paramedic along with her partner Ben Parker (Adam Scott) who someday will become the uncle of Peter Parker. She has the capacity to see events a few minutes into the future that have not yet happened.
Cassie then meets up with three teenage girls: Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced) and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor). Her mission is to protect the girls from Ezekiel, who has increasingly grown in power and strength and is targeting them.
Madame Web is one of the most spectacularly unconvincing superhero outings to date. It’s a trainwreck from beginning to end. Johnson is perhaps one of the least involving heroines ever to be put on the big screen. She isn’t given time to be intriguing or compelling. Instead, she spits out dialogue that makes her more of an annoyance rather than someone to root for. I could say the same for the rest of the cast, especially the three girls.
The special effects are clunky and have no sense of imagination; rather, they’re used for mundane, routine scenes in which we know no one will be in real jeopardy. The editing is ludicrous and seems choppy in so many scenes.
Madame Web could’ve had a lot of potential to be a great series, but it’s ruined by poor execution in one scene after another.
Despite it not being part of the MCU (yet), I think it’s time that Marvel reexamine how to make films outside of their universe more exciting and fun. Madame Web is a textbook example.
It’s a long, dull, goofy mess.
Grade: C-
(Rated PG-13 for violence/action and language.)
