Dakota Johnson admits she wasn’t all that shocked by the bad reviews for her latest film “Madame Web” and it doesn’t sound like she’s racing back to appear in another comic book movie…
“Madame Web” may go down as the worst reviewed film of 2024 but leading star Dakota Johnson doesn’t sound all that surprised by the reactions to the movie.
Johnson stars in the “Spider-Man” spinoff film that actually serves as a prequel of sorts about a woman involved in an accident, who ends up with precognitive abilities to see the future, and she ends up interacting with a group of girls all destined to become superheroes one day. The film cost $80 million to make and ultimately only earned $91 million at the box office but it was a critical disaster with the movie currently sitting at just a 12 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Our own review said that “Madame Web” “might end up having the unenviable spot as the worst modern comic book film of all time.”
As she promoted the film, Johnson spoke often about the “drastic” changes made from the version of the movie she thought she was making to what actually ended up being shown to audiences. Now after all the brutal reviews for “Madame Web” have been unleashed, Johnson finally addressed what sounds like a dour experience making the film.
“Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that this has gone down the way it has,” Johnson told Bustle. “It’s so hard to get movies made, and in these big movies that get made — and it’s even starting to happen with the little ones, which is what’s really freaking me out — decisions are being made by committees, and art does not do well when it’s made by committee.
“Films are made by a filmmaker and a team of artists around them. You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms. My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not. Audiences will always be able to sniff out bullshit. Even if films start to be made with AI, humans aren’t going to fucking want to see those.”
Ironically enough, we joked in our review that the dialogue in this movie felt like a bad AI generated script.
That said, Johnson took a shot at making a big budget superhero movie and it’s an experience that she can add to her resume but she’s not exactly racing back to do another of these films.
“It was definitely an experience for me to make that movie,” Johnson said. “I had never done anything like it before. I probably will never do anything like it again because I don’t make sense in that world. And I know that now.
“But sometimes in this industry, you sign on to something, and it’s one thing and then as you’re making it, it becomes a completely different thing, and you’re like, Wait, what? But it was a real learning experience, and of course it’s not nice to be a part of something that’s ripped to shreds, but I can’t say that I don’t understand.”
Johnson actually owns her own production company and she seems more focused on making movies where she has a much bigger creative voice in what happens versus what unfolded on “Madame Web.”
Judging by the reaction to the film, it’s not likely anyone from that movie will be seen in a “Spider-Man” movie again and it looks like we’ll all just try to forget that “Madame Web” ever happened.
