New to UK and US cinemas from today is the comic book adventure movie, Madame Web. Directed by S.J. Clarkson, the movie stars Dakota Johnson, Adam Scott, Emma Roberts, Sydney Sweeney, Celese O’Connor, Isabela Merced, and Tahar Rahim, and tells the story of a New York paramedic who can predict the future.
In the movie, the year is 1973 and in the Peruvian Amazon a heavily pregnant Constance Webb is on an expedition to locate a rare spider. The spider is said to have the ability to grant super strength to anyone it bites, including a hidden tribe of ‘spider-men’ who supposedly live in the jungle.
After locating the spider, Constance and her team are betrayed by their colleague, Ezekiel Sims. Sims shoots everyone in the expedition party, including Constance, steals the spider, and leaves them all for dead.
With Constance on the brink of death, the local ‘spider-men’ descend from the trees and try their best to save her using the bite from one of the rare spiders. However, while they are unable to save Constance’s life, they are able to oversee the safe birth of Constance’s daughter, Cassandra.
Flash forward to 2003, and Cassandra ‘Cassie’ Webb is now working as a paramedic for the New York Fire Department. Her life is ticking along fairly normaly, until she starts to have visions of the future.
One of these visions involves three teenage girls, who appear to be in danger. The girls are being hunted by Ezekiel Sims, who is back on the scene and also experiencing visions.
In Ezekiel’s visions, these teenagers grow up to be costumed ‘spider-women’ and are responsible for his death. In order to stop this future scenario from coming true, he dedicates his life to killing them at the earliest opportunity.
With Cassie aware the girls are on limited time, she tries her best to keep them safe. But since stealing the rare spider back in 1973, Ezekiel has developed powers similar to Spider-Man, and will not rest until he has located the girls and ended their lives.
Now, in the above summary, you will have noticed words such as ‘spider-women’ and ‘Spider-Man’. The reason for this is because Madame Webb is the latest entry in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe – a Spider-Man adjacent series of movies which so far includes the Venom films, Morbius, and the forthcoming Kraven the Hunter.
But the emphasis here is on the phrase ‘Spider-Man adjacent series of movies’, because as with Venom and Morbius et al, Madame Web doesn’t feature Spider-Man. It includes a few references to Spidey’s world (the Daily Bugle, Uncle Ben, a baby Peter Parker, etc), but this is a Spider-Man-lite movie.
So, if you go into this movie expecting to see Spider-Man, you will be disappointed. Outside of a few teases here and there, which largely exist in the film to provide fan service, Madame Web has little to do with Spidey.
What you do get instead, is a fairly run-of-the-mill super hero movie which has some nice ideas, but is largely a bit pants. It’s not as GOD AWFUL as 2022’s Morbius, let me make this clear now, but it’s not that great either.
Madame Web is a bog-standard superhero film, which feels like it is stuck in the past. It’s ironic the majority of the film is set in 2003, because it feels like it should have been released around this time, and is somewhat similar to the likes of Elektra (2004) and Catwoman (2004) – although, arguably not as bad.
Madame Web‘s biggest problem is that it is a fairly dull movie. The film runs two-hours in length, and boy, does it feel like a two-hour picture!
There is a fair bit of set-up, quite a lot of talking, and a number of scenes which go on longer than they should. The film is also low on action, and mostly devoid of humour.
The only comedy in Madame Web is unintentional comedy and comes from the sight of seeing the various ‘spider-women’ in costume. These costumes look like they’ve been produced on a TV budget, or possibly stolen from the set of Smallville, and are beyond laughable.
Although I should point out, the costumes barely feature in Madame Web. Outside of Ezekiel Sims’ Spider-Man-style costume, the use of Spandex is very limited in Madame Web, and only rears its head when director S. J. Clarkson has to show it.
If you’ve watched the preview trailer for Madame Web and you expect to see the likes of Spider-Woman or Araña popping up here, there, and everywhere, you’re going to want to temper your expectations. The film offers a few shots, and that’s about it.
Where Madame Web works best is largely in the casting of Dakota Johnson as Cassie Webb. Johnson makes for a great lead, she sells every scene she is in, and I genuinely believe that when she signed up for this film she thought it was going to be much better than it is.
It has been reported that Madame Web underwent some re-writes and some reshoots before it was released, and I suspect some of the better material got lost in the mix. I imagine when Dakota Johnson agreed to play Cassie Web, it was in a film that looked much better on paper than what appears on screen, so that’s not really her fault.
Either way, Johnson is a highlight. The same can also be said for Cassie Web’s psychic abilities, which provide a fun twist on Spider-Man’s precognative ‘spider-sense’ power, and are one of the better things in the movie.
Outside of this, there’s not much else to recommend. Adam Scott isn’t bad as ‘Uncle’ Ben Parker, while Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, and Isabela Merced are perfectly fine as the trio of teens who are set to become future ‘spider-women’.
As for Tahar Rahim as bad guy, Ezekiel Sims, well, the less said about him the better. As a villain, Sims is pretty much one-note, but Rahim is not great in the role either, so it’s a mess from start to finish.
Madame Web suffers from being too slow, too dull, and far too underwhelming. It has some decent moments, and plenty of potential, but it fails to excite or offer much in the way of originality.
The film also suffers from being yet another Spider-Man-related film which doesn’t feature Spider-Man. Sony’s desire to build a universe around Spider-Man characters, without bothering to include the star player, is getting very monotonous and appears to be back-firing on a spectacular scale.
Madame Web‘s biggest selling point is that it is marginally better than Morbius, but this is far from a reason to go and see it. However, if Sony want to stick that on the poster, it might help sell a few tickets.
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