Sony Pictures’ newest movie “Madame Web,” which released on Feb. 14, immediately received negative feedback from critics and Marvel fans alike, only earning 12% on Rotten Tomatoes and 3.8/10 on IMDb. While the movie reportedly cost $80 million to produce, it only made $77.8 million worldwide. This movie is not the first flop Sony has released as an attempt at making a respectable superhero movie, either, which is evident in the dismal reception of their 2022 movie, “Morbius.”
“Madame Web” follows Cassandra “Cassie” Webb, a New York City paramedic who begins to develop clairvoyant superpowers as a result of a spider bite her mother received while pregnant. Throughout the film she fights to protect three teenage girls, Mattie Franklin, Anya Corazon and Julia Cornwall, from Ezekiel Sims, who is stalking and attacking them because he had a premonition that they would kill him in the future.
There is no accurate way to describe this movie other than saying that it was a mess. The trailer was promising enough, but I was unaware that those 45 seconds would display the only interesting parts of the whole 125-minute production.
About half of the run time consisted of establishing the fact that Webb could see into the future, but she never used her ability for anything interesting at all. In fact, for being marketed as a superhero movie, there was an extreme lack of action of any sort. To me, this was quite disappointing and made the movie even more lackluster than it already was.
Several highly successful actors were cast, such as Dakota Johnson as Webb, Sydney Sweeney as Cornwall, and Emma Roberts as Mary Parker. Despite this, most of the lines of dialogue felt unnatural and forced, which was especially true when considering Sims’ conversations. Most of what he said seemed like he was trying too hard to be intimidating instead of actually being threatening. It felt like the script had to force itself to seem interesting instead of already being that way in the first place based on most of the wording of Sims’ lines and their delivery.
I was also a bit bewildered by the cinematography. The camera would shake any time some sort of action would happen, and it zoomed in on characters’ faces at random intervals. I assume that this was an attempt to add emphasis on the events that were taking place, but it ended up taking away from the moment because it was not executed well.
Although there are several glaring issues with this film, I cannot say that there was nothing good about it. The special effects were visually impressive to watch. The scenes showing Webb’s premonitions were intense and dynamic. They were interesting to see because they allowed the viewer to understand what Webb was going through in a fascinating way.
The interactions between Franklin, Corazon and Cornwall were humorous and realistic to how teenage girls talk in real life. The three characters each had very distinct personalities that contrasted with each other well. Their witty banter was easily one of the high points of the film.
In all, “Madame Web” is an attempt at a highly-rated Marvel blockbuster that ended up being poorly scripted and put together. It was an unimaginative pull for relevance and money but ended up being an abhorrent failure. Any fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be heavily disappointed by this film.
