If only Cassandra Webb’s clairvoyance had predicted how bad a movie about her would be, we could have been spared two hours of a subpar superhero caper.
Madame Web, starring Dakota Johnson as a clairvoyant paramedic in New York City, highlights everything that is wrong with superhero movies being churned out by the studios in the past couple of years (with the exception of the animated Spider-verse movies).
Based on an elderly Spider-verse side character, Sony Pictures’ Madame Web, directed by S.J. Clarkson (Anatomy of a Scandal), should become an example of what happens when you scrape the barrel to dish up whatever superhero fare you think will con the audience into watching it.
The film is doomed right from the opening set in the jungles of Peru in the 1970s where there is an exposition dump about a spider, whose peptide has miraculous healing properties, and spider-people. In 2003, our lead hero — Johnson as Cassandra — is an acerbic adult orphan who is incapable of making human connections except with her fellow paramedic Ben Parker (Adam Scott). Yes, Ben is yet to become Uncle Ben to young Peter Parker.
After she almost dies while saving an accident victim, Cassandra comes back with the power to see the future ranging from five seconds to five minutes to aeons, presumably. We are not sure. She is tasked with saving three teenage girls — Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor) and Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), who are supposed to become superheroes in the future, from power-hungry villain Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) who is out to kill them.
If the story is unimaginative, the performances are worse. Madame Web fails to get the audience invested in either the saviour/guardian who seems apathetic, or her charges who are supposed to be quirky but come off as bratty and annoying.
Johnson does everything with a deadpan expression, whether she is running for her life, saving others or fighting for them. Rahim is a waste as a two-dimensional villain and the girls hardly get a chance to explore anything other than the brattiest side of their characters. The only plus? One can totally see Adam Scott becoming Uncle Ben of “with great power comes great responsibility” fame, not that the film even once acknowledged the presence or coming of Peter Parker, which is strange.
Stranger still is the classification of Madame Web as a suspense thriller. There is absolutely no suspense and there is zero thrills. The action is as insipid as are the dialogues — “The best thing about the future is that it hasn’t happened yet” and “Great power will come when you take on the responsibility” are two of the worst.
The golden age of superhero movies is over. And while they aren’t yet dead — the Deadpool & Wolverine teaser did break records for most-watched trailer in 24 hours two days ago — movies like Madame Web, which are trying hard to cash in on the superhero bandwagon, are definitely ringing the death knell for the genre.
