Written by Kerem Sanga And Matt Sazama And Burke Sharpless And S.J. Clarkson And Claire Parker
Directed by S.J. Clarkson
Cassandra: "If you want to live, you have to trust me."
The first live action comic book movie of 2024 and we are definitely not off to the greatest of starts, are you? The curse of Venom being a hit was that Sony had a misguided belief that there was an audience for Spider-Man adjacent projects. This film currently bombing in theatres should put paid to that.
So, snarkiness aside, how bad a movie is Madame Web? I'll let you on a secret, it's not strictly bad per se, just painfully average and too plodding for it's own good, following by a very rushed conclusion, a desperate to bag a sequel and other stuff in between.
The movie started in the jungle of Peru where Ezekiel Sims (Tahir Rahim) betrayed his whole team, just to get his hands on a spider. This included leaving the heavily pregnant Constance Web (Kerry Bishe) for dead, only for a tribe of Spider people to deliver her baby girl.
Thirty years later and the baby in question turned out to be a snarky, emotionally distant woman named Cassandra (Dakota Johnson). She's a paramedic working with Ben Parker (Adam Scott), the uncle of you know who and pretty soon a freak accident at work managed to awaken Cassandra's psychic abilities.
At the same of that the very rich Ezekiel had his girl Friday, Amaria (Zosia Mamet) track down three teenagers. The teenagers being Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced) and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor). Apparently these three will grow up to be Spider-Women and bring about Sims downfall, so he's desperate to take them out first.
Because of that, the three teenagers and Cassandra become entwined with each other and the latter's powers continued to manifest, she took it upon herself to learn more of her mother's past while also stopping Ezekiel (who donned a black Spider suit) from killing Julia, Anya and Mattie.
The funny part was that while also this was happening, you also had the subplot of Mary Parker (Emma Roberts) being creeped out by Cassandra during her baby shower and of course giving birth to Peter, though his name was never stated in the movie. It's amusing but doesn't influence the main story itself.
Other than that, the last battle between Ezekiel and Cassandra was something of a rushed job with the former defeated in a rather anticlimactic fashion and the latter getting blinded and paralysed for comic book accuracy. As for that ending, yeah, we're never getting a resolution to that one.
- The original idea for this movie was actually Cassandra and the Spider-Women protecting a pregnant Mary Parker from a time travelling Ezekiel Sims, which would've made more sense.
- Despite marketing the leads in costumes, you barely see it. Superhero movies need to stop with grounding things like that.
- Standout music: Britney Spears Toxic, Cranberries Dreams and Yeah Yeah Yeah's Miles Away.
- Chronology: 1973 Peru and 2003 Manhattan during this movie.
Madame Web has definitely gotten 2024 off to a rocky start with this particular genre and it might not be the only movie to suffer as a result. It's far from the worst I've ever seen but there was clearly a better movie that got massacred with studio interference and far too many rewrites. Memes aside, this one should be quickly forgotten about.
Rating: 5 out of 10
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