By Abbey Kinzel, ’23

Alumni Writer

Madame Web is an absolute cinematic disaster for a multitude of reasons, but I’ll only be covering a few to save you from a 12-page review. One of the many issues starts with the budget of the film itself. Other superhero movies like Venom, Venom 2 and even Morbius had a better budget than Madame Web. Venom was allotted about $100-$116 million, Venom 2 had $110 million, and Morbius received $75-$83 million. Madame Web had a budget of $80 million. But it was more like 80 cents after paying stars Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney and shelling out for the visual effects, which were the only decent aspect of the movie. 

The film, meant to be the origin story of a superhero in the Spiderman universe, was written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. The pair has worked together on several well-known films like Dracula Untold, Gods of Egypt, Power Rangers (2017) and Morbius. (Yeah Morbius, you know it’s morbin’ time, with Jared Leto, pretty bad). Most people who watched Madame Web in theaters say that Morbius is better by a landslide. Madame Web’s dialogue feels choppy and unfinished since there was a script change when Dakota Johnson signed on. The characters have absolutely no arc, no background, and no backstory; they’re almost like zombies. The characters have as much depth as a stick gum; it’s like they have no life, no soul. 

At this point, I’ll be going into spoiler territory, so if for some reason you still want to watch Madame Web, just be warned. Johnson plays Cassandra Webb, whose mom dies while trying to research a spider that gives superpowers, (how convenient). Cassandra is bitten by this spider – a big shock – but doesn’t develop superpowers right away. She grows up and becomes a paramedic, when she bumps her head and activates the power to see into the future. When she has a vision of three girls being murdered by a random guy, she vows to prevent it. (The only reason the guy wants to kill the girls is because he keeps having nightmares about the girls killing him. That’s it, that’s his reason). The girls hide out in the home of Cassandra’s friends, Ben and Mary (hmmm, I wonder who Ben is), but when Mary goes to the hospital in labor, the girls are discovered by the bad guy.

There is no action or fighting in this action movie, only the nightmare the bad guy keeps having. The only exciting thing Cassandra does is hit the bad guy with a taxi, and then throw an ambulance at him. In the end, Cassandra and the three girls just lure the bad guy to a spot where he gets crushed by a sign. At this point, Cassandra is blinded and can’t walk so she is next to useless. But now she can see into the future whenever she wants to and will help mentor the three girls who are spider-women now. 

From the movie and the tone of Dakota Johnson, it’s like Madame Web doesn’t want to be a part of the Spider-Man universe. It’s so hard for me to watch a Sony live action Spider-Man movie because they have just gotten progressively worse and worse. Just like with the Fantastic Four, it’s so hard to watch a reboot from a company that never made the source material; they’re just interested in taking your money. My biggest pet peeve is that the movie is boring, and almost made me fall asleep, which never happens.

Even having a star like Johnson didn’t do the movie any favors, as she went on the huge press tour trying to practically seduce viewers into watching it. She admitted at the premiere that she’s never watched the movie and doesn’t plan to. That’s her own issue since she avoids watching any of her movies for her self care, but maybe don’t say it to reporters and make them think that the movie is bad. 

Sony should just stick to making animated Spider-Man movies like Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse and Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse. The first animated spider-verse movie had a bigger budget than Madame Web and did better in theaters. So, to put it bluntly, Sony should stick to what they do best: draw.