Calum CooperMadame Web is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
Madame Web is the type of bad that’s so all-consuming that it achieves a bizarre majesty. If it weren’t for the headache-inducing craftsmanship, it would have to be seen to be believed. Is it the final nail in the coffin for Sony’s shared Spider-Man universe? Possibly, but it’s going to need a bigger coffin.
Following the leads of the similarly terrible Venom and Morbius, this story is about a popular side character from the Spider-Man comics. Set in 2003, Cassie Web (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic who works tirelessly to save others but comes across as distant. Even accepting a hand-drawn picture from a thankful child is laden with awkwardness. During an emergency, she has a near-death experience that activates dormant powers. Suddenly, she can glimpse into the future, determining when something awful is about to happen. If only we’d been so blessed.
Her most prominent vision concerns a villain in a dark Spider-Man suit, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim). He also has clairvoyance and has seen a vision where three teenage girls, Julia, Anya and Mattie (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor, respectively), become superheroes and will eventually kill him. As he hunts them down, Cassie steps in to protect them, attempting to master her new powers, which may be connected to her late mother’s work in the amazon.
If that seems like a lot of info to process, that’s because it is. Virtually all of it is conveyed through dialogue over visuals, with characters engaging in exposition-heavy exchanges so manufactured that the deliveries come off as clunky and robotic. Some of these interactions don’t even feature another character, such as when Cassie ponders the meaning of her mother’s research out loud, with only herself and her cat in the room. It’s overwritten dictation constructed almost entirely of plot at the expense of emotion or earnestness. Attempts to glean personality from the characters come in the form of laughably lame lines like, “Seriously, don’t do dumb things”.
As Cassie gets her visions, the editing becomes erratic, presumably as a means of demonstrating her chaotic powers. Yet this choppiness continues outside of these visions. Zoom-ins showcase determination and wide angles spectacle. That’s all well and good, but the editing also mashes up narrative sequences so much that the storyline feels disjointed despite the overabundance of plot points. One sequence sees Cassie flying to Peru to learn about her mother’s research, a flight she has no trouble making despite being on the run and unknowingly under observation from Sims’ CCTV-monitoring minion. How she managed to get through airport security without being spotted is a glaring question that one may have pondered if they weren’t distracted by the blindingly apparent ADR. It’s a film so detached from its story that dialogue is often delivered via unmoving lips.
Dakota Johnson seems to be trying her best and has proven herself a capable actor. But her character is devoid of charm, a concept carved out of superhero cliches and apathetic stoicness. The writing and editing undercut the few moments of exasperation or grief she experiences. Sims is a nothing burger of an antagonist, an intimidation-free role who serves to oppose the heroine because that’s just what happens in superhero films. The side characters range from the three teenage girls, who are clearly played by women in their 20s, to roles that function primarily as references to broader Spider-Man stories, seldom leaving their assigned archetypes. Like Johnson, the cast’s efforts are passable, but one can’t blame them for any palpable lack of enthusiasm.
Director S.J. Clarkson is not unfamiliar with Marvel properties. She played a significant part in bringing Jessica Jones to life, a brilliant show whose first season is still comfortably the best thing to come out of the MCU. Yet she is so unfairly constrained by the fickle demands of the studio that her direction is on autopilot. It goes through the motions of a typical superhero film – the great power comes great responsibility line even gets a cumbersome paraphrasing – without ever becoming immersed in its set pieces or potential themes of solidarity or time. The action is occasionally interesting, such as when Cassie drives an ambulance through a bulletin board, but the janky editing and desaturated colour palette robs the film of any visual appeal. The result is a mix-and-match version of a Marvel film, full of plot points but without consideration for their emotional function or thematic purpose. It’s as dull and lifeless as any bad blockbuster, yet its blatant inability to manage the vital audiovisual components of its storytelling makes it more likely to induce dizziness than thrills.
Madame Web is an enigma. It’s as joyless and conveyor belt pedestrian as the worst superhero media, yet its presentation is so haphazard that the experience of watching it leaves you with more questions than answers. Sony has had a notably horrible track record with their MCU-adjacent films, but even by those standards, this is a turkey. This is what happens when studio interference runs rampant – you get a product that’s somehow both hollow and overstuffed, crafted by imagination-bankrupt algorithms, and the need to appease nostalgia-addicted, media-illiterate fanbases at the expense of originality and authenticity, as well as any and all talented creatives that have the misfortune of being credited.
The last thing I want to do is give these same terminally online fanbases validation for their disturbing malice towards female-led media, which, sadly, already seems to be happening with this film. Those people desperately need to get a life. But, as a media critic, I’m obligated to fairly report my honest thoughts on movies as I see them. Thus, I am duty-bound to conclude that Madame Web is an omnishambles.
