In many ways, it’s almost fitting a movie like Madame Web takes place in 2003. During this time, Hollywood was still trying to find its footing on how to make superhero movies. Following the problems with Batman & Robin and whatever Steel was supposed to be, the Blade movies were the only thing keeping the genre up as the new millennium approached.
That was until X-Men changed things up. And it all fell apart again. I liked Ang Lee’s attempt with Hulk. But the first Spider-Man is still pretty sloppy. X2: X-Men United was a better movie. But then, Daredevil tried to hard. It was too violent for the movie it was trying to be. And it’s spin-off Elektra was just about worse. Then, there was Catwoman and the less said about that the better.
It wasn’t until Christopher Nolan would make Batman Begins and it was possible to make a serious superhero movie. Fantastic Four attempted to move at the right pace and superhero movies were full swing in 2008 with Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and of course, The Dark Knight. Sadly, now we have superhero fatigue where it seems Marvel is making live-action movie adaptation or series of just about everything. I joked at one time, they would do a story about Greg who was in a few panels of Captain America back in 1976. I don’t know if there was a character named Greg in a Captain America comic printed in 1976, but it seems plausible.
Madame Web is what James Gunn did with The Suicide Squad, except without the humor, style, format and care for the characters. You can clearly see with this movie where everything fell apart and they attempted to piece it together. However, no one really wants to see a movie about comic-book characters who are peripheral to the more popular characters. I’m not fan of Mark Millar but I will give him credit for saying what Marvel was doing movies on the lesser known characters. And 15-20 years ago, they had to because they didn’t have the film rights.
Yet, in the hands of great filmmakers like Jon Favreau and the Russo Brothers who understood the assignment, they were some of the best movies of recent years. And Millar has said that the game ended with Avengers: Endgame which was why it was probably called what it is. It should’ve ended there. But Hollywood producers will milk a product until nothing but air comes out.
Sony still obtains the rights to the Spider-Man franchise and all its characters which has made for some awkward movies in recent years. While I enjoyed Spider-Man: No Way Home, I feel Sony should’ve ended it there as it was a nice coda to the MCU. But they’re trying to make the Sony Spider-Man Universe, the SSU, but so far, all they’ve been doing is sending out an S.O.S. That Venom sequel wasn’t good. And what was going on with Morbius?
Sony has rebooted the franchise twice and this is an attempt to carry on the product while Tom Holland and Zendaya do other projects. It didn’t help that the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes delayed the inevitable fourth Spider-Man movie longer than anticipated. At this rate, it’ll be 2026 before another Spider-Man movie if Sony doesn’t try to squeeze one out for Christmas 2025. That will still be 4 years since No Way Home.
And this is the first summer where there has been no MCU movie since 2009. But Madame Web will make us forget that because it’s so forgettable we need something else. We need something new and better. It doesn’t help when the lead Dakota Johnson publicly trashes the movie. And Johnson hasn’t really impressed me as an actress but I can understand her frustration. At 34, the daughter of actors Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, wasn’t really supposed to be the next Meryl Streep. But her beauty and charm has helped her out in some roles.
Here she plays Cassandra Webb, a paramedic/EMT living in working in the Queens borough of New York City. While on a call, she accidentally falls into the East River and has to be rescued and revived. Soon, she learns she has the power of clairvoyance. Of course, this is the same borough where Peter Parker grew up and lives. It just so happens Ben Parker (Adam Scott) works with Cassandra also called “Cassie.” And Ben makes a reference to dating someone very serious. So, yes, it’s Aunt May who he is talking about. And since she’s not a blood relation, it explains for some of those awkward scenes in the Spider-Man movies between Holland and Marisa Tomei. Ben is living with his sister-in-law, Mary (Emma Roberts), who is preggo with Peter.
But wait?! This is supposed to be 2003, which means Peter is only 12-13 during Captain America: Civil War. But the War of New York was 2012. I know that because the MCU has to reference it in every other production. But that was eight years before Peter meets Vulture. But the Snap happened in 2018. Yes, the timelines don’t work. Maybe people age faster in this world. I think I read where it’s supposed to be a fourth Peter Parker. Sure, Sony, why not reboot it a third time.
I know it’s just a movie but there’s got to be some type of rational logic even in a superhero movie. We’re also supposed to believe that Cassie while wanted by the police for kidnapping can easily travel from NYC to Peru two years after 9/11. Ok, let’s just say that 9/11 doesn’t happened in this timeline. But a lowly paramedic with no prior knowledge of cloak and dagger skills wouldn’t be able to travel out of the country. Her passport would be flagged even in a pre-9/11 world.
Who is she accused of kidnapping? It’s three teenage girls who are played by women in their early to mid-20s, who no one in NYC would think are underage. Well, maybe for Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), who is supposed to be shy but she’s dressed in a nerdy sexy school girl outfit. (You know, because it’s Sydney Sweeney who is every guy’s fantasy right now.) Then there’s Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor) who is from a wealthy family but her parents are absent. And finally there’s Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), who is Cassie’s neighbor forced to live along after her father’s deportation. And that’s the extent of their personalities other than Julia being the white girl, Mattie the black girl (but light-skinned black to appease racist fans) and Anya is the Latino (but the litter skinned Latino to appease racist fans).
I feel that writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (an appropriate surname) intended Julia, Mattie and Anya to be a commentary on Gen Zers since they are Gen Xers. But it doesn’t work, because the teenage girls are actually Millennials. It’s 2003, remember? And Johnson, a Millennial, is playing a Gen Xer, even though she’s not much older than the actresses in real life. So, there’s a lot of constant nitpicking and arguing by the three teenage girls because that’s all writers think Gen Zers do in these movies. But they’re Millennials, guys!
It doesn’t really matter. They’re being hunted by Ezekiel Sims (Tahir Rahim) who has a nightmare that the teenage girls will grow up to be Spider-Women and will kill him. And yes, there are about two very clunky edited scenes of the actresses in their Spider-Women outfits. But I wouldn’t classify this as an origin story, more like an origin of an origin of an origin. Sims was a former explorer in the 1970s who betrayed Cassie’s mother and killed her as they were searching for a lost tribe in Peru. He was able to gain the tribe’s strengths and abilities such as clairvoyance as well as the abilities to poison anyone with a touch.
Oh, he also crawls across ceilings and walls and wears a suit similar to the Spider-Man suit but darker in color. It’s a mess. But what’s funnier is how a lot of Sims dialogue doesn’t match his lip and mouth movements. This is because the movie was heavily re-written, re-shot and re-edited and they weren’t able to do re-shoots with Rahim who can speak English perfectly. Even the voice doesn’t sound authentic. It’s more like the badly dubbed foreign movies you’d find on cable.
It’s just one of many things wrong with this movie. Johnson has said the final cut was a lot different than the movie she signed on. I feel that Mary and Ben were supposed to be more relevant but their roles were cut shorter. And we’re still supposed to believe that in 2003 New Jersey, a newspaper would have a story about three kidnapped teens from NYC on the new stands within mere hours. Sazama and Sharpless are the writers on Morbius, Gods of Egypt and Dracula Untold, all poorly received movies both at the box office and with critics. Why are they still being hired to write these movies? At least Aaron Seltzer and Jason Freidberg were making bad movies that turned a profit for a while.
S.J. Clarkson (who is the movies’ director in her first feature) is also credited as a writer along with Claire Parker. Clarkson who had directed episodes for January Jones and other TV shows, obviously was overwhelmed by studio interference and constant re-writes and re-shoots. What it comes off as is a superhero version of Final Destination or The Dead Zone. Cassandra is obviously a reference to the myth of Cassandra of Troy who was a princess cursed with knowledge of the future but unable to get anyone to believe her. (But as others have pointed out, the death of her supervisor in a car wreck was actually inadvertently caused by her trying to stop her supervisor from leaving.)
As usual the movie ends with a climax with a big destruction where a lot of things go boom and building structures collapse. And the ending is suppose to set up a second movie, which isn’t likely to happen. Madame Web only made about $43 million in North America and about $100 million worldwide total. However, it had a 61 percent drop in ticket sales from the first weekend to the second. And several theater chains reported that pre-ordered tickets had been canceled as the early negative reviews were released.
Believe me, don’t waste your time, unless this is given the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 