WARNING: This article is essentially just a long rant and contains SPOILERS (although you likely don’t care).
You may or may not be aware of the new Marvel movie released by Sony: Madame Web starring Dakota Johnson. This film is another addition to the Sonyverse, along with the Amazing Spider-Man movies, Venom 1 and Venom 2, Morbius, and later this year, Kraven the Hunter and Venom 3.
The plot of the movie consists of a man named Ezekiel Sims (a.k.a. Morlun) who has a vision of the future where he is killed by three teenagers. He sets out to hunt down the girls to prevent him from being killed, while Madame Web tries to protect them. The movie begins with Madame Web’s mother finding a spider in South America that she claims may be able to cure many diseases. Once she finds the spider, the man she was with shoots her and takes the spider and says he doesn’t want to help people because no one helped his family when they were in need. Madame Web’s mother then manages to give birth to her baby just before dying.
Her baby grows up to be a paramedic named Cassandra Webb (a.k.a. Madame Web) who becomes friends with her fellow paramedic, Ben Parker (a.k.a. Uncle Ben). She begins having visions of the future which she can’t control. One of her visions is of Morlun killing three teenagers whom she ran into earlier that day. She then finds the girls and they try to run from Morlun. During this time, she learns that the three girls all have poor living arrangements or are orphans.
After this, she drops the girls off at Uncle Ben’s house, who at that time was caring for his pregnant sister, Mary Parker, the mother of Peter Parker. Madame Web then returns to her birthplace where she learns that her mother was in South America searching for the spider because she believed the spider could cure Madame Web from being deformed at birth, and that Morlun was her mother’s killer. She then learns to control her ability and explores every way to prevent the girls from dying.
During this time, Mary Parker goes into labor and Uncle Ben and the girls rush her to the hospital, where Morlun finds them. Madame Web arrives in time and manages to use her power to outsmart Morlun, which leads to his demise. During the climax, Madame Web is hit with a firework, which causes her to go blind. After the climax, Mary gives birth to Peter, and Madame Web adopts all the girls and they then live in Madame Web’s apartment where the girls all become crime-fighting heroes.
So what did I think of the movie? I thought it was pretty bad. If you thought my summary didn’t explain everything well, it’s because the movie doesn’t explain it well. The acting is very flat and the villain is very generic and one-dimensional. Unlike other Marvel movies, there are no fight scenes and the entire movie is just Madame Web and the girls running from Morlun. Morlun is also not very threatening. You barely see him fight and the most you see him do is crawl on walls. Also, he dies due to Pepsi’s constant product placement. I mean that literally, as he gets crushed by a Pepsi sign. One thing that the fans had some excitement about was seeing some of the Spider-Woman suits from the comics. Unfortunately, you only see them at the last minute of the movie and they aren’t even used in the final battle. How Madame Web and the girls get the advanced suits is also never explained, not surprisingly.
This movie has recently been associated with 2021’s Morbius, which earned a reputation for being awful and was a popular meme at that time. It turns out both movies have the same writers. This situation may happen all over again later this year with the release of Kraven the Hunter, which was supposed to be released last October. On Rotten Tomatoes, Madame Web received 13%, which is somehow lower than Morbius’ rating of 15%. The movie is also being ridiculed since it is heavily believed to have re-used footage from Spider-Man 2.
Finally, I have to wonder, who asked for this? Madame Web isn’t a super well-known character and this movie is just setting up a movie that isn’t going to happen: The Amazing Spider-Man 3. I also doubt this movie will play into the upcoming Sinister Six movie, which so far has a pretty lousy lineup including Venom, Vulture, Morbius, and most likely Kraven the Hunter. Madame Web was doing so poorly that when I went to see the movie, I thought I would be the only one in the theater. It turns out a couple was also in the same theater and they mentioned that they apparently thought the same and expected an empty audience. At the end of the day, at least the (maybe two) die-hard Madame Web fans in the world will be able to sleep soundly knowing there’s a Madame Web movie playing somewhere in an empty theater.
