Did Madame Web Ever Have Potential?
Halfway through Madame Web, I snuck a peek at my phone to see how much time was left, and heard this strange noise coming from somewhere in the next row. It was a little kid on his phone playing a video game, ignoring the movie completely. If neither one of us could keep our eyes on the screen, who exactly was this film made for?
Madame Web seems like a no brainer money maker. You have the big-name cast (our main character Cassie is played by Dakota Johnson, alongside a younger cast trio led by Sydney Sweeney, Adam Scott is Ben Parker, and his sister-in-law Mary is played by Emma Roberts). This is a Sony standalone Spidey movie, technically not connected to the MCU (someone forgot to tell Sydney Sweeney that), but its adjacent story is enough to theoretically draw MCU fans in. Superhero movies have reached insane levels in the past. Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame made 2.7 billion at the box office, making it the third highest grossing movie at the time. There’s not many other superhero movies that can compete with that. But I’d argue Madame Web isn’t even competing. Its seemingly AI-written script and poor storytelling took it out of the competition before it even premiered.
Madame Web opens with a scene taking place in the Peruvian jungles in 1973 where Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé), a scientist, is looking for a spider with special properties (sound familiar?). She’s accompanied by Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) who we have very little information about, other than being our typical bad guy. He’s power crazy, a bit creepy, and almost too cringey to be truly afraid of. Again, typical superhero movie bad guy. Constance is pregnant with our protagonist, Cassie, and because of what happens in the jungle, Cassie is an orphan who we later find in New York circa 2003.
Our Millennial adult Cassie is awkward, a bit cynical, and works as an EMT. That’s about it. But, she’s started getting these weird visions and seeing moments before they’ve happened. We see Ezekiel has taken the spider from the jungle for himself to grant him the Spider-Man powers we know and love. He also sees visions, but they’re only of three girls–Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Mattie (Celeste O’Connor). We see through Ezekiel’s vision that these girls are future Spider-Women who want to stop him. But right now, they’re just random teenagers.
Slowly, this movie becomes a mentor-mentee relationship, with Cassie as a protector for these three wayward teens. She’s trying to keep them safe from Ezekiel as he tracks them down through…a stolen NSA surveillance. At one point tells his evil assistant (played by Zosia Mamet A.K.A Shoshanna from Girls… which is insanely funny if you’ve seen Girls) to track down the girls through different cameras around and outside of the city. This scene is important, only because Ezekiel’s actors' lips don’t match what he’s saying. The internet caught onto this, leading to speculation about how much of the movie’s plot changed throughout the shooting and re-shooting process.
Johnson herself mentioned in an interview that the Madame Web script went through “drastic changes” after she signed on. Which, with reports that Johnson fired her talent agency after seeing the first trailer for Madame Web, is not surprising. I’m seriously concerned about how different the first script was compared to what we got. How could it have been worse?
As a viewer, Cassie as a character is hard to feel any connection to. Maybe things would be different if I’d read the comics first? But as a casual viewer, there is nothing about Cassie that makes me want to keep watching. It’s hard to say if this is a symptom of a bad script, or bad acting. Dakota Johnson’s portrayal of Cassie is dry, and lacks any believable emotion. Johnson seems like she gave up believing what she was trying to sell halfway through shooting.
At one point, when Cassie is trying to figure out her spooky, future visions, she prevents a bird from crashing into her apartment window by opening it and ensuring the bird lives. Johnson does that classic superhero ooh and awe moment of realization, and mutters the worst dialogue I’ve ever heard: “I guess you didn’t die after all.”
I think maybe my biggest issue with the whole movie is the writing. They’re throwing us dialogue that tells us exactly how we’re supposed to feel. The emotion is cheap, the writing is cringey (honorable mention to the spider-guy who tells Cassie, “when you take on the responsibility, great power will come,” that made me want to scream.)
Madame Web is essentially an origin story. But I don’t think it needs to be told yet. Watching Cassie stumble her way through superpowers bootcamp, I was bored. Why should I care about this woman, who herself mostly doesn't care about the people she saves? If we look at previous Marvel movies, our leading superheroes became their superhero selves at least halfway through the movie. Cassie isn’t truly Madame Web until the last thirty seconds of the movie. We don’t even see the three teenagers as Spider-Women, unless you count the fifteen second future visions.
I was excited to leave the theater once Madame Web ended. Not even the use of “Dreams” by The Cranberries during the credits could keep me seated for longer. My fellow movie goers seated around me seemed defeated. The little kid with the video game finally put it away. I’m afraid the days of good superhero movies may be behind us.
