Madame Web Review : A Movie That Encapsulates Everything Wrong With Superhero Films Today

Madame Web Review: A Movie That Encapsulates Everything Wrong With Superhero Films Today

 Sony’s latest abysmal Spider-Man Spinoff, Madame Web, premiered on Valentine’s Day, with no love lost whatsoever.

By - Ubong Ekpo

I had the “pleasure” of viewing Madame Web last week and every single negative review that it has garnered was spot on, what a mess of a movie! The choppy, jumpy editing that goes from one conflict to another within seconds had me feeling like the movie at times was running at 1.5x speed. Dakota Johnson does her best with the so-called “script” that she was given, (the same screenwriters who wrote Morbius, so this mediocrity isn’t new to us). I enjoyed her dry, awkward sense of humor, but this movie didn’t really know what type it wanted to be. Throughout we’re given these weak, underdeveloped Spider-Man easter eggs, such as the Ben Parker character, but they ultimately lead nowhere, Spider Man is never mentioned by name.

 The most egregious part of this film is how the marketed material of this being like a Spider-Girl team-up movie, was only just a brief glimpse. Literally, the scenes of the three girls fighting in the trailers are the only scenes in the movie where they are suited up and have powers. This film wanted to be an origin story and lacked the substance or heart to pull it off. The three girls, who are all strangers and don’t have a natural bond, ending up as best friends in a matter of hours, was jarring. The inclusion of the newest Hollywood sex symbol Sydney Sweeney wasn’t enough to save this film.  However, this movie’s villain was the character that lacked the most heart out of all of them.  I kid you not when I say Ezekiel only repeated the same 5 lines, different variations of “ These girls cannot stay alive”, and “ I must kill these girls” His motivations for stealing the spider are never deeply looked into, as nothing else is in this film.

 Utter mediocrity like Madame Web being released truly makes you wonder about what is going on in the movie industry today. It actually is quite obvious, but still perplexing, that profit more than ever is prioritized over art, but at what cost?  Sony continues to make Spider-Man-related movies, without actually featuring Spider-Man, which is almost like an excuse now to make the movie as lifeless as possible. Ironically, the animated Spider-Man film from the last Spider-Man, Across The Spiderverse grossed over $600 million last year. 

  Madame Web is going down as one of the worst superhero movies of all time and arguably one of the worst movies of all time. I saw some promise, but I must say I agree with the negative reviews overall.   As someone who champions The Dark Knight as the greatest movie of all time, I think the genre just simply needs a rebirth or rebrand; the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine, which is rated R, could be a signal for where the genre needs to move into, a more serious, mature tone, rather than a throwback to the pre-MCU days where superhero films were still in a camp like tune. Madame Web was a soulless cash grab from the start, Sony needs to do better if they want to maintain Spider-Man rights, because these movies they keep releasing make it seem like it’s inevitable Spider-Man will be a fully Marvel property once again.