From the writers of critically panned movies such as Gods of Egypt and The Last Witch Hunter, comes a brand-new action spectacle from the studio who brought us The Emoji Movie and Morbius. Madame Web is the newest installment in SONY’s Spiderman without Spiderman universe and currently has a rotten tomatoes score of 13%, making it the lowest rated film in this series. In this review I’ll let you know if Madame Web is as bad as everyone says, or if it is just a misunderstood classic.
I try to go into every movie with an open mind. Seeing this film get slammed by critics didn’t help, but my goal for this movie was to at least have fun, and seeing this with a group of friends definitely enhanced my viewing experience. If I’m critiquing Madame Web as an actual film… it’s almost as bad as it gets.
I might as well start with the script, which is a jumbled, incoherent mess. Why did SONY think it was a good idea to hire the same writers as Morbius? It’s one of life’s greatest mysteries. The big problem here is that the script is just very dull. The story has some slightly interesting things going on, but they never fully explore any of these ideas. The script is also filled to the brim with awful dialogue that had me laughing multiple times throughout the movie.
The editing is also off the charts in this film. The way that they visualize Madame Web’s powers throughout the movie is so extra that it becomes overbearing at certain times. Watching this movie is what I imagine it feels like to be on LSD.
The performances in this movie are ok… Dakota Johnson is fine… I guess. I will say that Dakota Johnson added a little bit of humor which I found refreshing, but when she was trying to show emotion, it just felt so off. The villain here is played by Tahar Rahim, and from his previous work I can tell that he is a very talented actor, but his performance in Madame Web might be one of the worst villain performances I have ever seen. There is also some very noticeable audio displacement, where his character is speaking, but his lips aren’t even moving, which just gets more hilarious the longer it goes on.
Aside from all the technical issues this film has, it also makes some very, very strange creative choices. The film tries its hardest to remind us that this is connected to Spiderman, and the way they do so feels disrespectful. There is a line in the beginning of the film that is such a disrespect to a certain character that I won’t name to avoid spoilers, but that soured my taste for the rest of the film. The villain wears a suit throughout the film that is almost identical to Spiderman’s suit, and it’s given no explanation to why. There is also a scene where three of our main characters are in a diner and they get up on a table to dance to Toxic by Bitney Spears. If that sounded random it’s because it is. It’s one of the most out of placed, yet hilarious scenes I’ve ever seen in a theater.
I get it, filmmaking is hard. I’m not saying any of the people that worked on Madame Web are bad filmmakers. I mainly blame SONY for green lighting the film in the first place. Watching the movie, it is very clear that SONY had a lot of interference in the creative process. The story feels very chopped up and disjointed, like it went through many rewrites.
Look, I’m not going to tell you not to see this movie because I did have fun watching it. It is so hilariously bad that it makes seeing it with a bunch of friends a great experience. If you are going in to see a good and well-made Spiderman story, then well, you might be disappointed with the final product. But still, I’m glad I saw Madame Web.