Madame Web review – did any­one involved in this film actu­al­ly want to be there?

There was a time, not so long ago, when every Hol­ly­wood actor – A‑Lister or aspir­ing – want­ed to be in a super­hero movie. At the height of its suc­cess, the genre made super­stars out of up-and-com­ing per­form­ers includ­ing Chris Evans, Brie Lar­son and Chris Pratt, to the extent it seemed almost a rite of pas­sage to play a role – hero or vil­lain – in a Mar­vel or DC project. But late­ly it’s felt like the bub­ble is close to burst­ing. Since Avengers: End Game con­clud­ed Marvel’s Infin­i­ty Saga in 2019, the stu­dios have seen dimin­ish­ing box office returns (still obscene num­bers, but not as lucra­tive as they had hoped) and increas­ing push­back from the crit­i­cal sphere. Even the fans, usu­al­ly reli­ably sym­pa­thet­ic to the cause, have been express­ing their grow­ing ambiva­lence, while stars such as Robert Downey Jr – whose career was revi­talised and arguably defined for a decade by Iron Man – express­ing, if not regret, a cer­tain hap­pi­ness to be out of the super­hero churn.

Not a great time to be launch­ing new super­hero projects then. In sharp con­trast to Mar­vel, Sony have been try­ing to get their own Extend­ed Uni­verse off the ground for a while. Pig­gy­back­ing off the suc­cess of their Spi­der-Man films (some of which have been made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mar­vel) they have been plun­der­ing the depths of Web­slinger lore for poten­tial gold. The ani­mat­ed Spi­der­verse films have proven high­ly suc­cess­ful, and even the Ven­om films, star­ring Tom Hardy, have been lucra­tive if not crit­i­cal­ly divi­sive. But Mor­bius, released in 2021, was a crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial flop (and an embar­rass­ment, as online trolls man­aged to con­vince Sony to put it back in cin­e­mas through a meme cam­paign, only for it to flop again on rere­lease). Their 2024 hopes lie with Spidey vil­lain spin-off Kraven the Hunter (pushed back from 2023 to this sum­mer) and Madame Web, loose­ly based on var­i­ous iter­a­tions of Spider-Woman.

When the first trail­er for the film dropped towards the end of 2023 it was wide­ly panned online for its dodgy-look­ing effects and star Dako­ta Johnson’s flat line deliv­ery, pos­sess­ing all the enthu­si­asm of a teenag­er reluc­tant­ly cast in a school pro­duc­tion of Death of a Sales­man. While social media buzz can build hype for a film, the pub­lic ridicule aimed at Madame Web did not bode well for Sony’s efforts at firm­ly estab­lish­ing a live-action Spiderverse.

It’s dif­fi­cult to say why Dako­ta John­son took the role of Cassie Webb, an orphan who dis­cov­ers she pos­sess­es clair­voy­ant pow­ers and must use them to pro­tect three teenage girls from grave dan­ger. Per­haps Johnson’s agent felt she should do a super­hero movie as many of her peers have – a sort of act­ing box-tick­ing exer­cise. It’s the sort of move that would have made sense a decade ago when John­son was fresh off her Fifty Shades of Grey con­tract. Now, best loved for her dead­pan press appear­ances and wry turns in var­i­ous indie projects, it’s a lit­tle more per­plex­ing that John­son would see Madame Web as a great career oppor­tu­ni­ty. Cer­tain­ly it can’t have been the script that reeled her in, flat and life­less as it is, con­sist­ing large­ly of char­ac­ters wor­ried­ly deliv­er­ing lines of expo­si­tion to each oth­er and a few lack­lus­tre fight scenes.

Equal­ly lost are Syd­ney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor, who play Julia Corn­wall, Anya Cora­zon and Mat­tie Franklin, the teenagers who are tar­get­ed by nefar­i­ous Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) who has prophet­ic visions of them killing him some­time in his future. They don’t yet pos­sess their spi­der-pow­ers – the film offers no indi­ca­tion of when they will get them either – so the film large­ly revolves around Cassie play­ing an ardu­ous game of keep-away as she tries to con­ceal the teens from Ezekiel’s wrath.

Mean­while, the film attempts to con­nect itself to the Spi­der­verse with the inclu­sion of Peter Parker’s uncle Ben (Adam Scott) who works with Cassie, and his sis­ter-in-law Mary (Emma Roberts). Mary is preg­nant dur­ing the film, and it’s strong­ly implied the baby is the future Peter Park­er. Still, the film stops short of actu­al­ly say­ing this (per­haps due to past com­pli­ca­tions Sony has faced around con­nect­ing their stand­alone projects to their Mar­vel col­lab­o­ra­tions). Sony may decree that Madame Web actu­al­ly takes place in an alter­nate dimen­sion to the Tom Hol­land Spi­der-Man films, because that seems to be the move when­ev­er a stu­dio cre­ates a super­hero that is less suc­cess­ful than they predicted.

Yet these corny attempts at world­build­ing all feel incred­i­bly lazy, nei­ther com­mit­ted enough for Spi­der-Man die-hards nor intrigu­ing enough for casu­al fans. A scene in which Cassie trav­els to Peru to seek answers about her spi­der pow­ers is laugh­ably old-fash­ioned, while the film’s shod­dy edit­ing and con­stant spin­ning cam­er­a­work only serve to make the audi­ence feel as if they have con­tract­ed acute ver­ti­go. With its 2003 set­ting, Madame Web is tech­ni­cal­ly a mod­ern peri­od piece, but aside from a clum­sy scene where a radio DJ remarks ​“This song is gonna be huge!” as he plays Brit­ney Spears’ Tox­ic, there’s pre­cious lit­tle about the film that makes it feel like it’s set 20 years in the past. ​“They can track you through those now,” One char­ac­ter says ner­vous­ly as anoth­er pulls out her cell phone. Mean­while, the vil­lains have access to a live, hi-tech sur­veil­lance sys­tem that cov­ers the entire New York and New Jer­sey area with facial recog­ni­tion soft­ware. This is sup­posed to be 2003.

There’s just some­thing grat­ing­ly cheap about the affair, from script to cin­e­matog­ra­phy to per­for­mances, as if no one involved want­ed to be there. John­son sleep­walks through her scenes, radi­at­ing indif­fer­ence, while her three teenage accom­plices are inter­change­able and Rahim’s Big Bad is a gener­ic mous­tache-twirling bore. If there’s one pos­i­tive, it’s that Madame Web is so com­plete­ly for­get­table, it’s unlike­ly to do any dam­age to the cast’s career prospects going for­ward. It should, how­ev­er, give Sony pause for thought about what exact­ly their game plan is going for­ward, and if this path of giv­ing every Spi­der-Man B‑character their own film is real­ly some­thing any­one, fan or not, real­ly wants.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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