Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, a web-slinging franchise already tainted by misfires, has (hopefully) hit rock bottom with its time-jumping thriller Madame Web. You can see the yucky studio fingerprints all over this overproduced origin story, from choppy-as-hell pacing to the insistence on hitting certain formulaic MCU-type beats. Initial trailers tease eerie premonition horrors à la Final Destination that are barely in the final product, which has more in common with the first Dr. Strange (not even the spooky Multiverse of Madness sequel). If Madame Web were Final Destination: Superhero Edition, this would probably be a much more enthusiastic review — but it’s not. Madame Web is instead a flat-as-hell found family remix and awful bad superhero introduction that’ll test your SSU patience in record time.
Dakota Johnson projects ambivalence and boredom as Cassandra “Cassie” Webb, who we meet as an emotionless thirty-something loner working as a paramedic in New York City. We already know she’s the daughter of deceased researcher Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé), betrayed by her expedition partner in Peru’s Amazonian rainforest while researching spiders. Cassie isn’t aware of the powers bestowed upon her during birth by a lifesaving arachnid bite, nor that Bruce Wayne wannabe Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) left her mother with a fatal gunshot wound. Cassie just wants to avoid death and watch American Idol like the average American during the early 2000s, not visualize the brutal killing of innocent girls who she then has to babysit thanks to the emergence of “time web” abilities that have her mind in a paradoxical blender.
At its core, Madame Web is a comic book adaptation that fights against being a superhero movie. It’s written into Cassie’s personality — she doesn’t ask for the burden of playing foster parent to her eventual minions. Cassie is a complicated protagonist written to conceal any excitement or ownership of her superpowers, which lands like a thud throughout Johnson’s performance. She's as cardboard-flavored as the refrigerator drawing Cassie heartlessly declines from a grateful child. It’s hard to blame an actress when the material is so humdrum and uninspired, but still, what Johnson translates to the screen is like administered anesthesia. Cassie Webb is forgettably played in monotone, whether fighting Evil Spider-Man, learning Las Arañas lore, or floating through time-web-space like Johnson is trying to locate a reality before she signed on to Madame Web.
Enter Cassie’s someday Spider-Women trio — who we only see as Spider-Women for, like, a collective two minutes (if even). Sydney Sweeney as good-girl-in-glasses Julia Cornwall, Isabela Merced as the fiery independent Anya Corazon, and Celeste O'Connor as rich-kid rebel Mattie Franklin. They are your prototype “found family” who dance on New Jersey diner tables to impress boys and make ill-advised choices because, if not, Ezekiel can’t locate his future murderers. It’s a numbing cycle of Cassie giving clear instructions for survival, Mattie disregarding the rules, and Ezekiel finding their location that falls into the same recycled staleness cemented by Cassie’s anchoring presence (or lack thereof). At least Johnson’s young castmates are allowed a tad more personality (which the film desperately needs). O'Connor’s brattiness as a skateboarding Spider-Punk in training or Merced’s stern insistence to obey orders allows for real character development — Sweeny less so, more of an American Girl doll for O’Connor’s troublemaker to corrupt.
The film’s avalanche of problems ripples from here. Heralded Morbius writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless claimed scripting duties after Kerem Sanga took a crack. Claire Parker also notches a screenplay credit, as does director S. J. Clarkson, so we can assume revision rounds took place — to highlight how many hands were in the cookie jar. Four talents trying to homogenize their styles into one voice. You’re right to assume the blending process is a failure.
Madame Web feels like a Frankenstein of spare Spider-Parts dissected and rebuilt by the studio machine. No role represents this sentiment more than antagonist Ezekiel Sims, who might be one of the worst supervillains in any comic book adaptation (SSU, MCU, DCU, the lot). Tahar Rahim’s performance is a blank stare and inconsistent accents; a millionaire (?), billionaire (?), who goes from shooting Constance Webb point blank and stealing her magic spider for personal use to living in New York City’s finest penthouse thirty years later, complete with his own NSA-stolen surveillance technology and tech wiz sidekick Amaria (Zosia Mamet deserves better). Sims isn’t the lead or focus of Madame Web, that’s Cassie Webb, but the screenplay so ineptly builds his nonexistent mythology no further than “bad guy in dark Spider-Man suit.” Not to mention his ADR work, in particular, is egregiously noticeable and quite horrendous for a Hollywood film with substantial budgeting and resources. Sims is a Mad Libs evildoer with an important arc about not obsessing over your future lest you doom your present, but producers clearly don’t care about the final cut version of Sims, which makes it hard for us to care in return.
My review could ramble another thousand words, so let me speedrun the rest.
- You’ll laugh at Madame Web, but not because it’s a comedy. I don’t know what Dakota Johnson did to the editing department, but her line reads in specific moments are unintentional comedy gold given their placement.
- The third-act fireworks “action spectacle” is an eyesore in the same ways we’ve seen a thousand times in rushed productions (as recently as Argylle). Edit cuts try to hide all the warped steel and falling debris that special effects can’t cleanly pull off (stop underpaying and overworking your animators). It’s loud, it’s crashy, and it’s a visual jumble of bright sparkles against darkened nighttime shadows that are just plain ugly.
- The film (embarrassingly) tries to have fun with being a Spider-Man movie that can’t acknowledge certain names because of Sony’s restricted character rights. Adam Scott plays “Uncle” Ben Parker — we get it. Stop having Ben say how he can’t wait to be an uncle. We get that Emma Roberts is playing Mary Parker, and her son will be named Peter — we don’t need the bash-you-over-the-head references on repeat. With great power, comes great yadda yadda. You’re not cute. You’re not coy. You’re just pandering and seem desperate.
- I grew up in New Jersey. Disco fry gravy runs through my blood. You can’t just dance on our diner tables. Stop it. Not even to Britney Spears' "Toxic" (banger).
- The film is both too long and too short. Madame Web is an ineffective origin story because it struggles tremendously with exposition dumps and overexplaining — yet so much goes unsaid. This either needed to be a quick 90-minute disaster or an informed 150-minute slog. As is, the story feels incomplete, even if the 2-hour runtime feels like imprisonment.
Madame Web plays as insincere, forces characters through obvious motions, and commits the ultimate sin for any superhero origin — is always looking toward future installments. I haven’t mentioned director S. J. Clarkson all that much because the film lacks identity, and I hope that’s a byproduct of wretched studio tampering. Sony’s inability to reconcile with the SSU's past and not let the future weigh down its present anxieties is in parallel with Cassie’s arc — and they can’t even tell that substory right. Madame Web is essentially promotional material for identities and superheroes you were sold this time around, with no real guarantee that any of these Spider-Women will appear down the road given the current SSU's disastrous status.