Madame Web Review-A Tangled Mess of Unoriginal and Boring Concepts
I can understand why Sony is tapping into the billion dollar franchise of the Spiderman universe, but this begs to be asked: Just because Spiderman has a rich comic book history with many endearing characters with deeper storylines, does that mean we need a movie for each one? Sony gave us both Venom and Morbius to mixed but mostly negative reviews, and now we have Madame Web, Sony’s next attempt at creating its own cinematic universe within the Spiderman canon. Unfortunately, Madame Web is a boring, clunky, and poorly written mess. It rehashes old movie tropes, does nothing with its talented cast, and adds little to nothing to the mythos of the MCU.
The story of Madame Web takes place in 1973 in the jungles of Peru where we find Constance Webb, played by Kerry Bishé, a scientist researching spiders with venom that has the potential to rewrite our genes. She wants to use this discovery for medical purposes but this makes it a target of Ezekial Sims, played by Yahar Rahim. He wants to use the spider’s venom to become stronger and to gain the same powers of the local tribe called “Las Aranas”, walking on walls and having superhuman strength. Constance is shot by Ezekial as he escapes with the super spider, and she gives birth to Cassandra in a cave with a tribe that looks all too similar to the famous Spider Man.
Cassandra Webb, played by Dakota Johnson, grows up to be an EMT without any knowledge of her origins, but soon after surviving an accident on duty she starts to experience visions of the future. As she is learning to trust these visions, she comes across three teenage girls who are being chased by Ezekial, who is intent on murdering all three. He is having future visions of all three murdering him, but in the future all three have Spider-like powers and are dressed in superhero costumes. Cassandra must learn about her past as well as her new abilities in order to save these three future Spider Women and stop the evil Ezekial from enacting his murderous plot.
From the very beginning I couldn’t help but compare the origins of the Spider powers to a similar plot point from the critically panned Catwoman film. In both films, the super powers are derived from an ancient civilization rather than by circumstance, and both retcon their heroes to abide by the rules of these powers, in this case being related to spiders and having Spider costuming and imagery. This does not add depth to their origins but makes being Spiderman mundane and boring, something that was innate rather than earned. In Madame Web, the Las Aranas tribe have similar red looks with black web-like structures across the body, very reminiscent of Spider Man’s red suit and webbing decals. Thankfully, aside from some blink and you miss character cameos, there is very little connecting this story to any of the Spiderman movies, conveniently mentioning a “Spider-person” rather than the titular “Spiderman.”
Many plot elements are conveniently placed to allow the story to continue forward by sheer chance rather than being connected to anything. The leader of this tribe speaks perfect English, and is easy to find in the Peruvian jungle when we are told that the tribe is reclusive and hard to locate. Almost immediately after the attack by Ezekial does the Las Aranas tribe appear to give us exposition that Cassandra will return herein the future, and when she does she finds the leader fully clothed without any difficulty in a scene that feels unnecessary. An attack in the subway is blamed on Cassandra who is also accused of kidnapping the three teenage girls. This would make more sense if there weren't multiple eye witnesses being attacked and police officers to verify the truth. Even the villains' motivations and monologues are just freely explained to the hero without any struggle or purpose, coming across mustache twirling rather than evil genius.
It's frustrating to see a cast of potential new stars be completely wasted by a terrible script and often bad directing. Dakota Johnson plays aloof well, but there is very little for her to do other than be snarky and uninterested most of the film. As the lead of the cast she comes across very unlikeable, exacerbated by a baby shower scene that is more awkward than it is funny. The three teenage girls, played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor are written to be equally unlikable, sharing a single brain cell during tense situations where their lives are at stake, and only being generic teenager tropes. Even with a killer constantly hunting them they ignore common sense, dancing on tables and making as much noise as possible. An attempt was made to make them likable or give them deeper personalities with each given exposition on their past, but we are given no time at all to really dive into their personal histories or any reasons to endear us to them.
Directed by SJ Clarkson, whose previous Marvel Cinematic Universe was directing several episodes of Netflix The Defenders and Jessica Jones, the story felt like it was initially created as a made for TV concept. Costumes are comic accurate but look goofy and cheap, and any flash forward visions with these costumes feel like an entirely different movie. The future vision and rewriting fate concepts was interesting, but was floundered by a poor script and bad directing. There were many opportunities to get creative with these ideas like other movies such as Edge of Tomorrow or Final Destination. Instead the visions are quick and sparingly used, with characters resolving the visions easily or oftentimes ignoring them completely.
Not much good can be said about Madame Web, and we can only question why Sony believed that this was a concept that was worth exploring in a multi-million dollar big blockbuster. The story was poorly written, the acting was phoned in, and the story only cheapened what we love about the Spider-man mythos we love. It doesn’t take a fortune teller to see that Madame Web is a generic and boring mess, and it might be time for Sony to hand Spiderman back to Marvel Studios.