Spoilers for Madame Web, but let’s be honest, do you care?
By: Austin Gonzales
“Madame Web” is Sony’s newest attempt at another Spider-Man spin-off property that comes off as nothing more than a cash grab. I really cannot convey to readers just how laughably bad “Madame Web” is. Sony Pictures’ newest film, directed by S.J. Clarkson, is set within their own self-contained Spider-Man cinematic universe. The movie stars Dakota Johnson as the titular Cassandra Web. Playing alongside Johnson in the film are Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, Adam Scott and Tahar Ramir. Web is a paramedic in New York with clairvoyant abilities that she uses to protect three young women from the man who was in the Amazon with her mom when she was researching spiders right before she died!
In 1999, Sony Pictures purchased the film rights to the Spider-Man IP. Since then, under Columbia Pictures, the studio has released a trilogy of films starting in 2002. In 2015, Marvel Studios had announced a partnership with Sony Pictures to include the Spider-Man character into the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sony would reboot the wall crawler once again to fit within the Marvel Universe of movies, all the while giving the green-light for their own separate entity of film projects.
Since 2017, Sony has released their own slate of Spider-Man related films without web-head himself. These projects have ranged from “Venom” starring Tom Hardy to “Morbius” starring Jared Leto.
“Madame Web” from start to finish, is a trainwreck in visuals, storytelling and direction. The film falls over itself with constant camera cuts – not just during action, but also one-on-one dialogue moments. Overlapped over the camera cuts are constant filters and flashes that should insist a flashing lights warning before the film.
The visuals translate just as well as the story. The main antagonist, Ezekiel Sims, kills the protagonist’s mother for a super powered spider. The spider bites Web’s mom before she dies, thus giving Web her clairvoyant abilities later in life. The spider plays no other part in the film.
Sims kills a cop later, and I honestly cannot tell you why. His main motive in the film is to kill three teenage girls because Sims has visions every night of the girls killing him in Spider-Man-like costumes. You would think with Web’s future vision power she would converse with Sims about the future.
Spoiler: she doesn’t.
He gets crushed by a Pepsi-Cola sign, which Pepsi has been foreshadowing throughout the film. No, really.
Also, Uncle Ben is here! I genuinely implore everyone to watch this crazy movie. Plot points do not make sense, characters are all directed flatly and I am pretty sure the main villain is dubbed over the entire movie. Seriously, watch his mouth. A lot of it does not match with what he is saying.
If you have the time, check out the hilariously bad “Madame Web” in theaters now. Witness the birth of Spider-Man. Like, literally.
