Madame Web
Before I go see a movie, I try to take in as little as possible about early reviews and commentary. I prefer a blank slate to view and review as honestly as possible. Somehow, Madame Webb's IMDb score slipped through my defenses. At the time, a 3.9/10. That wouldn't necessarily scare me away; sometimes it can seem as though critics expect Marvel (and Marvel-esque) movies to work the same way as, say, an Oscar-bait film and therefore analyze them using similar rubrics.
Long story short: this is a round-about way to say what a fool I was a week ago. 3.9 was GENEROUS.
Madame Web follows Dakota Johnson as "Cassandra Webb," a NYC paramedic. After an accident, she begins to see into the future. Cast into a villain's murderous web, she must protect three young women and, just maybe, find if she cannot only envision their futures, but change them as well.
To start, I'm tempted to say that Dakota Johnson was miscast as Cassandra Webb, but she has moments in her portrayal that work(ish). Mostly, I think it comes down to Johnson being mildly disinterested and lost amidst this train wreck someone in a fever dream called a script.
Because no person who was not under the influence would actually call this a script. A "script" is a set of cohesive scenes, laced with dialogue, building, building, building on the previous moment before it, culminating in an epic climax that ties up loose ends or offers a sneak peak for more. Madame Webb is not that. As a premise, time-warping spider-woman works fine. Unfortunately, premise is all we got going for us.
There's a villain, "Ezekiel Sims" played by Tahar Rahim, who's just like, bad and stuff. He steals a spider that holds superpower-like qualities because something bad happened to him (it's never elaborated on) and then does more bad things because visions (but not good visions because they're not remotely close to happening the way he sees them). This poor actor, Tahar Rahim. You cannot convince me someone didn't just ask AI to generate random villain phrases as his dialogue. Every time he spoke, I half expected a laugh track revealing we're actually just watching a poorly written skit.
There's also our three (future) spider-women, the girls Cassandra Webb must protect. I don't hate the acting here. Sydney Sweeney is fine as shy Julia Cornwall and Isabela Merced and Celeste O'Connor her more confident friends Anya Corazon and Mattie Franklin respectively. But there's just, like, nothing for them to do. I've rarely noticed the blatant lack of agency in non-super characters in super movies, but somehow they took people who (if we're reading the future correctly) may someday be super and made them superfluous.
...somehow they took people who may someday be super and made them superfluous.
And let's not forget the addition of Adam Scott as "Ben Parker" because we have to Easter egg our way to relevance here. Grr. I actually think Adam Scott would make a fantastic young Uncle Ben. He only needed a better movie to back him up. As it is, we just have him traipsing around the edges of the story to remind you why you bought a ticket: this entire cinematic universe is one big web (it seems I'm contractually obligated to make at least one pun per story). Also, at one point, one of the girls says that it's so great Ben gets to be an uncle because he gets all of the fun and none of the responsibility. Cassie Webb smirks, "that's what he thinks." Ummm, why you smilin' like that? We all know what's going to happen to Peter Parker's family tree...
That's not even getting to Cassie teaching the girls CPR. Our cartoon villain poisons his victims and, if it gets to your heart, it's lights out. Unless you know CPR which is, as everyone knows, the cure for poison. We don't even have to mention Ms. Webb never really learning to control her powers. She's just like, really good at it once she decides to be. But hey, maybe the lack of character-building was a creative decision. And I just don't even feel like talking about the dialogue. You might imagine that to be a cop out, but I promise you: if at any point, the dialogue had remotely resembled humans speaking in a normal conversational cadence, I'd give it the time. As it is, the screenwriters didn't appear to care, nor shall I.
I hate this movie.
Madame Web ends with the line, "the best thing about the future is it hasn't happened yet." A little on the nose, but not as much as my replacement: "the best thing about the past is I wasn't out six bucks."
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