Sony’s not at all misguided and hugely beloved Spider-Man-less cinematic universe continues with its most well-crafted and inspirational entry yet with Madame Web (film). For years now, the anticipation for this movie has been exceedingly high and now that it’s spun onto cinema screens, it seems as if all our dreams have been answered.
If sarcasm isn’t your thing then maybe that opening paragraph might have got you excited for one of the best entries in the genre, and for that I do apologise. Unlike Dakota Johnson’s titular character here, Cassie Webb, the filmmakers clearly didn’t have clairvoyant abilities because they would’ve looked ahead and decided against making this soulless and lazy attempt at cashing in on the Marvel brand.
To be a little fair to it, I’ll give any movie a point that uses Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ for an action sequence because I appreciate when the classics are used, but I don’t really have much else good to say beyond that. I haven’t seen one positive review yet for this movie and I can’t imagine this one will discuss anything different to others have about what just doesn’t work about this flick.
It’s not surprising in the least that it’s not very good is it really? None of the Sony Spider-Verse films that began with Venom (2018) have been great, the best we’ve had is the 2021 sequel to that Let There be Carnage and that can only be described as dumb fun at best. I never want a movie to be bad and for the first 20 minutes or so I was interested, but after that it just went downhill fast.
Beyond using a great song, the best I can say is that I like all the actors here for the four female leads. They are trying so hard to build a camaraderie between their characters, it’s just the script gives them nothing to work with besides constant exposition, frustrating character decisions and no real reason to believe they’d all stick together. They’re supposed be superheroes in the future, but we never get an understanding as to why.
There are a few cool moments and some fun camera tricks, nothing to be excited about or even worth watching for but it’s often very brief and then returns to minimal amount of effort. Perhaps the biggest sin of the movie is that it’s boring. It’s a superhero movie with no superheroes and very little action happening that is just one big tease for what potentially could be a better movie in the future that we’re just not going to get nor really want. The very last shot is so unearned, it’s laughable.
Maybe it could be watchable with a half-way entertaining villain, but what we get here is a stand-in who is incredibly tedious, one note and forgettable. At least the previous SSU movie had Matt Smith in the villain role having a good time. Not even the many references to the wider corners of the Spider-Man universe carry any weight and are embarrassingly forced in with little subtlety.
In the end I walked out just wondering why this movie was made. It doesn’t do the characters any favours and I still feel as though I know nothing about them after spending nearly two hours with them. It’s joyless, there’s zero stakes, zero tension and no reasons to really care. Later this year will be the fifth entry into the SSU Kraven the Hunter and no doubt we can expect more of the same.
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