Madame Web: Superhero movies at it's most tired, laboured and lifeless

⭐

By Rob Ryan

Madame Web feels like a throwback to the cheesy superhero flicks of the early 2000's with hardly any of the amusement or flash that make them somewhat entertaining and with all of the filler seemingly left in. Despite the occasional chuckle at the clear lack of self-awareness in the film's cringeworthy exposition dialogue and the occasional sloppy CGI that makes you feel nostalgic for the days of early CGI, the movie as a whole is nowhere near as fun in either intentional or unintentional fashion as hyped up which only makes the end product that much more disappointing. All you're left with is a flat, visually lifeless, thinly written and muddled mess with a cast left high and dry to deliver this material with a straight face.

Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) was born to a woman (Kerry Bishe) who died when giving birth in the Peruvian jungle whilst on an expedition to search for a super spider that can cure diseases before she can return home with her discovery of said spider, her and her team are doubled crossed by a man (Tahar Rahim) who was hired to protect her and only wants to have the spider for his gain (whatever that is). Before both she and the baby die, the natives take her to their cave, they give her the venom from the Spider's bite, it spares the baby but it isn't enough to save her. Now 30 years later Cassandra works as an ambulance driver in New York alongside her partner (Adam Scott)

Everything changes for Cassandra when nearly facing death on the job and now she possesses the ability to see into the future, albeit in ways that are disorientating for the audience and her powers only seem to ever serve the plot when it's most convenient. Meanwhile, our big bad guy has gained Spiderman esc powers from the super spider but he is met with visions of being killed by three women in tacky superhero costumes and has been dead set on finding them. The women in question are 3 teenagers who will grow up to become superheroes and have all encountered Cassandra at some point and I hardly remember any of their names, there's a rich, spoiled brat (Celeste O'Connor) who flips off Cassie after nearly getting run over by her ambulance, There's Anya, the only name I remember (Isabel Merced) who's dad was deported and now is avoiding immigration officers and the foster care system. Lastly, there's an awkward girl (Sidney Sweeney) whose comically oversized glasses lets you know perfectly well that the character is indeed just that. There's not a single quality about these characters that stands other then what I've told you but regardless they are the targets of our bad guy and now Cassie has to protect them while also learning about herself, her true power and how great power comes blah blah blah blah...

The first 30 to 45 minutes of the movie are a complete slog. What the filmmakers think is character building is a bunch of scenes reinforcing the same information over and over and over again. We have a bunch of flat scenes of Cassandra either pondering about how left out she feels cause she doesn't have a mother or discovering her powers and getting Deja vu because of them, a perfect example is when she visits her partner's wife (Emma Roberts) during her baby shower and it goes on for what feels like 15 minutes. When that's not happening, the bad guy is so desperately seeking for those girls because "they'll destroy him!!" It's like you can almost hear the studio executive in the preview screening for this film asking "Hey can we please have one more scene with the bad guy where he berates his hacker lady for not finding his targets and how he came from nothing and how they will destroy him? I wasn't sure he was supposed to be a bad guy"

When we finally get to the scenes that are supposed to be exciting, every set piece is so awkwardly executed much like the first 45 minutes that preceded it that there is no change in mood felt from the scenes prior, There may be a minor chuckle from the unfinished cgi and the final fight scene having the most generic dialogue I think I've ever heard in a major release but it becomes very apparent from that point on that no one's hearts seem to be in it. There might have been someone who cared or had good intentions starting but it doesn't show in the final film. It's more interesting to me if a bad movie is made by people who not only should know better but made it with such passion that they are unaware of the failures at the helm but here it feels more like a project out of obligation from everyone involved, much like the majority of superhero movies nowadays which makes it much more tedious to sit through.

Some random thoughts when watching this: Why did the Villain refuse to mask up when walking to the Subway to kill the girls but when Cassie saves them, he then decides to mask up in the spider gear? What was his game plan? Kill all the witnesses on the coach too? Use what power and influence he can have to get off scot-free for his violent murders? run away and go into hiding? Why do these characters who should be traumatised at the terrifying possibility of death, feel comfortable enough to walk to a diner and dance to Toxic by Brittany Spears on a diner table? Did they just forget what they went through? Is this a coping mechanism for them? How come the man who nursed Cassie's Mother and helped her give birth, never made the effort to tell Cassie about her origin, what her mother died for? Why did he bared all the responsibility to find out about her past on herself? Maybe if he did the opposite then maybe she could have used her powers for good on the job for example, maybe she wouldn't have been so resentful of her mother as she was at the start of the film, maybe if she had already learned to master her powers at the start, then this movie would have flowed a whole a lot better. Why doesn't the villain despite seemingly being given the same venom as Cassie have similar time powers as Cassie? That way there would be some tension as she could have met her match instead of the audience never being in doubt Cassie and her friends being fine no matter what thanks to her ability to know what's going to happen before it does.

Dakota Johnson is not a terrible actress, her calm, soothing demeanour works very well with her collaboration with Luca Guadagnino in Suspiria and A Bigger Splash but here she comes across (like a lot of her movies) as someone who has taken a lot of Qualaudes, It's because of this I've never thought she stood out in anything I've seen her in and this film is no different. Granted the dialogue is below par and it's probably hard to deliver it with a straight face. But still she seems to be only half interested in her surroundings and it especially stands out like a sore thumb when you consider this is supposed to be the lead in your big super hero tent pole release. No one else in the cast stands out either, everyone is very two-dimensional at best and no one seems to evolve throughout the course of the movie in both personality and character.

All of this would be bad enough without the obnoxious and nauseating editing especially in moments when Cassie travels through time or gets stuck in limbo in the spider dimension (?) even moments that are supposed to be emotional are ruined by half second cut to black to the same shot over and over again, to the point it nearly gave me a headache. Even moments when she faces DejaVu ruin the flow and pace of some moment's that at a certain point, you just want to shout at the filmmakers to "get on with it already!!"

The only interesting element of the film is at the very end, the inevitable conclusion to the typical superhero origin story that you expect in a movie like this, once you see Cassie become Madame Webb, and the girls come to themselves, you are given a preview of the sequel yet to come that I'm very sure will happen. You kinda wish this movie like Spiderman Homecoming was about the aftermath of the origin, not saying that this would have been a good movie but it closely resembles the "so bad it's good cringefest " that has been hyped around this movie. This version of Madame Web feels like it would have been at least perfect for the CW/DC Catalogue before the CW became what it is now. It's really telling that the only time you are given something close to tangible interns of investment is at the very end.

In the end, Madame Web for me is more annoying than it is fun and is not as enjoyably bad as I heard which only made it less entertaining to watch. I am having a hard time trying to figure out why this needed to be made. Was this supposed to tie into the Sony/Marvel universe or was it intended to be its own thing? With the amount of competition currently not to mention that we appear to be at the peak of superhero fatigue, I don't think there was much they could do to make this project a rousing success.

Madame Web is out in UK cinemas now.