Web of Trash: Madame Web

WRITTEN by Jeremiah Sullivan

This movie was a spit in the face to anyone who paid hard earned money to see it - not just fans of the characters or the comics but literally just anyone who decided to give this film their time.

This film was so bad I actually fell asleep watching it, which I’ve never done before. As a fan of Spider-Man and comics in general I was surprised this character was chosen.. until I saw that it was a Sony film and realized that they will seemingly just green light any movie about any Spider-Man adjacent character for a quick buck.

From a troubled and sloppy production, to heavy script rewrites and blatant lies to the star cast about what this movie would be and do for them, this movie is an all around mess. We don’t see any of the main characters use their powers or get their costumes until the end of the film and there we learn almost nothing about them. The main thing we learn is that Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is an extremely rude person for seemingly no reason and refuses to help people on multiple occasions, despite being an EMT. While the other girls are at least distinct in that you can tell them apart from the little personality they're given, they really just spend most of their time being hunted down by the antagonist. And that’s it.

The main villain, Ezekiel Simms (Tahar Rahim), is a character from the comics that I've been fairly fond of in the past, but he’s done such a disservice in this movie. The vast majority of his lines are lazily dubbed over (because re-shoots are hard, I guess), and he’s boiled down to basically just an evil villain, when his character in the source material is far more nuanced than that. 

At the end of the day this is just another bad Sony Spider-Man movie that lacks the only character actually people want to see: Spider-Man. We can now officially add Madam Webb to Sonys pile of live action comic book garbage right along with Morbius, Venom 2, and - I’m just guessing - Kraven the Hunter. Say what you will about the Marvel MCU movies, but at least they’re competent. 1.5/5