If you thought “Morbius” was a flop, you’re not gonna wanna watch “Madame Web.” The writing was cheesy, the timeline was hard to follow, the movie was too fast-paced and the acting was awful. Directed by S.J Clarkson and starring Dakota Johnson, “Madame Web” has got to be one of Marvel’s worst-written films so far.
The movie is a superhero origin story set in 2003. Johnson plays Cassie Webb, a paramedic in Manhattan who begins to struggle with seeing visions of the upcoming future. Like any good main character, she has a traumatic upbringing: her mother died during childbirth while researching spiders in the Amazon. During the opening scene, we learn that her mother’s companion, Ezekiel, betrayed her and left her to die over a magic spider with supposed medicinal properties.
Years later, Cassie has a vision about Ezekiel attempting to murder three teenage girls who he believes are destined to kill him in the future. Here, we get what is arguably the best cinematic scene in the movie – simply because of the costumes. The three future Spider-Women are seen ostentatiously dangling from ceilings wearing pretty sick costumes. Sadly, the costumes were only a part of the movie for all of two minutes. It’s never explained how the three teenage girls will become spider women in the future – but perhaps they expected a sequel.
Cassie, having seen Ezekiel kill the girls in the future, kidnaps them and takes them on the run (but it’s okay because their parents are neglectful). After this, everything pretty much goes downhill. By that, I mean I can’t remember anything significant from the movie’s second half. Other than a bunch of terribly filmed action scenes where the camera pans and zooms until it is disorienting to look at any longer.
There was so much going on… yet nothing was going on. The most memorable part was when Cassie took a random flight to the Amazons to meet the mysterious spider people so she could go to the past and meet her mother. I wish I were kidding, but sadly, that was an actual plotline thrown in there.
The strangest thing about this film is that most of its actors are pretty well-known. Dakota Johnson from “Fifty Shades of Grey,” Sydney Sweeney from “Euphoria”, and Adam Scott from “Parks and Recreation.” As much as I’d like to blame the poor acting on the writing, some lines were just terribly delivered. The writing and dialogue were unnatural, and the actors felt completely disconnected from their characters, almost as if they couldn’t believe what they were saying.
Ultimately, I had high hopes for “Madame Web” and was profoundly disappointed by Sony’s poor writing again. It was by far one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a couple of years. If I had to rate it, I’d give it a 2.5 out of 10, which is generous. Perhaps Sony should slow down on the superhero movies and pick a different genre for now.
