Here’s our review for the new film “Madame Web,” which is further proof that Sony needs to just stop making these “Spider-Man” adjacent spinoff films because they’re only going from bad to worse….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
There’s a lot wrong with Sony’s latest “Spider-Man” spinoff film titled “Madame Web” and there are more than a few burning questions that need to be answered.
Let’s start with — who thought this film was a good idea in the first place?
Sony has invested a lot of capital into the “Spider-Man” universe because it’s the only ultra-famous comic book character the studio owns, which also comes along with every major character attached to the webslinger. While Tom Holland has soared to success as the actual titular character where Sony has partnered with Marvel Studios on three critically acclaimed films as well as numerous appearances across the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the spinoff films have been anything but cinematic masterpieces.
Now we all understand that comic book movies are graded on a slightly different curve than say Oscar bait such as “Killers of the Flower Moon” or “Oppenheimer.” We also know that not every comic book film will end up like “Black Panther” where the movie is not only a critical darling that actually earned numerous Academy Award nominations but also earned a boatload of money at the box office.
That said, we still have to expect something more than utterly unwatchable dreck that feels like a half-hearted attempt to cash in on the name Spider-Man without actually bothering to make an interesting motion picture.
To make matters worse, Madame Web as a character is very Spider-Man adjacent. In the comics she’s an elderly blind woman, bound to a wheelchair who uses powers of clairvoyance and precognition to occasionally help Spider-Man solve a crime. She’s never really led her own series and her appearances are at best sporadic across the various Spider-Man titles.
There was absolutely no one crying for a Madame Web film other than some executive who likely saw the name, thought it sounded cool and decided to pitch this as a movie.
Next question — did AI write all of the dialogue in this movie?
From the first second until the last, “Madame Web” spouts out more cheesy, eye-rolling dialogue than your average Lifetime movie. Some of the lines in this film are just woefully bad. It’s almost as if the producers took the script to Joel Schumacher’s universally panned film “Batman & Robin,” fed it into Chat GPT and said “make us a script that serves as an homage to this classic movie.”
That’s how bad the dialogue is in this film.
Next question — who decided to make “Madame Web” a prequel film for an original movie that doesn’t exist?
Yes, “Madame Web” is an origin story about how Cassie Webb gains the ability to see into the future, which allows her to affect the lives of three young women being sought after by a power hungry megalomaniac, who seeks to finish them off after his own clairvoyance convinces him that these girls will eventually become superheroes and kill him.
But let’s be clear about this — Madame Web as a character really has no powers that make her a “superhero.” Meanwhile, the three young girls meant to eventually become heroes are just teenagers trying to escape homes with parents that either don’t seem to care much about them or they’re just not around. None of them are lurking around science buildings and getting bitten by radioactive spiders, at least not in this movie.
This film feels so much like a poorly planned prequel that it’s amazing there wasn’t an actual original film this was based upon. In theory, there should be a movie that focuses on the three girls after they become superheroes and then you travel back in time to see how they got there in the first place because that’s effectively what “Madame Web” attempts to do, although even that’s very poorly executed.
Next up — who thought it was a good idea to go “She’s All That” on Sydney Sweeney?
Let’s be clear about one thing — Sydney Sweeney is an incredibly talented actress with the range to play a wide variety of characters. There’s no doubt in my mind that she could easily lead her own superhero franchise if somebody gave her the chance.
But the problem with Ms. Sweeney in this film is that the producers, the writers or the director decided that she’s playing a somewhat timid, mousey character so the best way to portray that is to give her a bad dye job, take off her makeup and put her behind a pair of glasses and we’ll never possibly realize that this is the same woman who stars in “Euphoria”!
When will Hollywood learn that this is always a bad idea?
Another question — who handled the audio and editing on this film?
Tahir Rahim, who plays lead bad guy Ezekiel Sims in the movie, seems to be a pretty talented actor, although I’ll admit this is the first time I’m seeing him. He portrays a villain hell bent on killing a trio of girls who he’s seen do the same to him in the future. Ezekiel has Spider-Man like powers thanks to a spider bite of his own that he got after betraying his employer when they were seeking this particular arachnid while stomping through the jungles of the Amazon. Who knew there was another spider that could give you all the same powers as Peter Parker without all that pesky radioactivity?!?
Now villain problems exist in a lot of comic book movies. It’s an issue that has plagued Marvel plenty of times but to say this particular character is razor thin would be an insult to razors.
There’s nothing much on the surface for Ezekiel Sims much less do we ever have any idea of what actually drives this guy besides his visions that show him facing off with a trio of Spider-Women in the future. But to make matters worse, every, single line that Ezekiel Sims delivers comes from a really poorly dubbed sound edit that somebody watching this movie had to approve.
Remember all the old kung-fu movies where actors delivered lines in their native tongue but then there was some remarkably bad dubbing done to make them speak English? It almost feels like that’s what they were going for when making “Madame Web” except this isn’t a 1970s kung-fu movie!
There are actually moments in this movie where you hear Ezekiel Sims speak but his lips aren’t quite moving. Seriously!
Next question — What changes were made from the original draft of this movie that has star Dakota Johnson suffering through interviews to talk about this film?
Press junkets are a necessary evil of promoting a film. The stars all sit down — sometimes one a time, others in a group — and there’s a car wash of journalists that come through to ask them questions about the movie. There’s a lot of repetition and you’ll occasionally get something good out of these but you can definitely tell that some actors are just spent by the time they get to the 20th person asking them “so tell us about your character?”
But Johnson has definitely had some interesting takes when asked about the final version of this film as it was released into theaters. She said point blank there are “drastic” differences between the film she signed up to star in and the one that ended up in theaters. In fact, Johnson said she hasn’t even watched the movie.
When your lead actress, who is also most definitely talented, says things like that to “promote” the film, you know you’ve got problems.
One final question — why did the director decided to use the worst take from every scene and then put it into the movie?
Listen, artists made interesting choices from time to time. Nicolas Cage has made a career out of some over the top, bonkers decisions that make it into his films. Sometimes they work, other times they don’t but we always like to celebrate his originality and creativity to at least take those chances.
Sadly, there’s no Nicolas Cage-like expressionism happening in this movie.
Instead, it feels like director S.J. Clarkson did multiple takes for every scene — as directors usually do — but then she decided to use the worst version for whatever ended up in the film. There are so many moments of poorly timed delivery and over-exaggeration of the bad dialogue these characters are forced to speak. Maybe that’s why it’s tough to get a usable take because the actors in this film had to — at least once or twice during production — stop and ask “is this really what you want?”
Knowing the body of work from actors like Johnson, Sweeney, Adam Scott and Emma Roberts should at least give us something to work with here but instead, we get a movie that feels like it was assembled from leftovers on the cutting room floor.
Is it possible this film is actually an attempt to lower the bar for future “Spider-Man” spinoff films? Like we know “Madame Web” isn’t good but it’s so bad that people are bound to cheer and holler for “Venom 3” when it lands in theaters! Is that where we’re at now?
I wish I had all the answers to these burning questions but it’s pretty safe to say that “Madame Web” just doesn’t work on any level whatsoever and I actually feel for the cast that had to sludge through promoting this film as if any of them will ever point to this as an achievement on their IMDB page. It’s much more likely they’ll each try to scrub this experience from their memory because “Madame Web” might end up having the unenviable spot as the worst modern comic book film of all time.
Well, actually let’s not forget Sony also produced “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” and Woody Harrelson’s awful hair piece would like to have a word with you about what’s the worst of all time.
“Madame Web” is in theaters now.
