Madame Web

Look at the profiles for the writers that wrote Madame Web. You'll see virtually every movie they've written has a bad rating and bad reviews. Why then does Hollywood continually hire these same writers for these big budget films? I could understand if they wrote movies for Asylum Films because all their movies are terrible.

Madame Web is god awful! Very difficult to sit through. None of the main characters are likeable. Even the villain is lame. It seems like the entire movie was written to set up a sequel. But why would people spend money to see the sequel of a movie that is one of the worst movies ever written? I'm shocked at how bad this movie is and if there is a sequel I certainly wont bother watching it.

Stop hiring bad writers, Hollywood!

... when I saw Dakota Johnson was starring in it. Naturally I can't lay the entirety of this hot mess at her feet. But there is some really bad campy acting happening on her part, reminiscent of the Fifty Shades of Grey movies in which she starred. Perhaps it was because the director was more interested in the placement of Pepsi cans than her performance, but I digress.

Basically, this movie plays out like the cut scenes from a budget Xbox 360 game. From the ground up this thing just feels designed to fail. It feels almost Producersesque in its approach in just how every aspect is seemingly intentionally mangled, yet no one seems to care. How have we come so full circle to go through the glory of Infinity War/Logan/The Dark Knight to arrive all the way back to Batman and Robin and Catwoman levels of superhero flicks? (Bam!, Pow!, Gosh yes Batman!)

How did this movie make it so far that it has an actual release, and no one stopped it? How did this idea get green lit? Why did Sony give 80 million and turn over their valuable IP to the people that wrote Morbius, Gods of Egypt, Dracula Untold and The Last Witch Hunter? How did this get past the writing process and again have that script greenlit? How could no one on the set at any point stop things? How did no one in the editing room point out how bad it looked and how much of a mess it was?

But to the suits it's not about art and story. Instead it's about business, and people are just a commodity. It's cheaper to recycle known quantities, and practice nepotism and involve maybe less than talented friends, people you've worked with before, than go out and find artists with worthy stories. They don't care about art, they don't care about stories, they care about making this work for them financially, regardless of loss of reputation with audiences as a whole.

Youtuber Chris Stuckmann did a deep dive on the topic of big studios being generally run by folks who came up through management rather than the creative rungs such as writing and directing when he discussed this film. His take is worth watching. For some reason, Chris doesn't do critical movie reviews since he has become a filmmaker, but I can tell by his tone that, like me, he was completely displeased watching this one. I'd avoid it.

Based on Madame Web's woeful reviews I was expecting this film to be an utter car crash. To its credit I will say it isn't entirely without merit, but it is incredibly boring and bland.

Mostly this is because nothing particularly happens. It's a superhero movie with little to no superhero action and a painfully long set up for an underwhelming final act. The characters are so underdeveloped that there is no emotional connection or investment in any of them. Everything about the story and writing just feels lazy, vacuous and corny.

Then there's the villain who is utterly uninspiring. He is constantly complaining about 'everything he has built' being destroyed. What has he built you might ask? The film has no interest in exploring this question. He's easily one of the more two dimensional and weak superhero villains I've ever seen committed to screen.

Perhaps the most heinous crime this movie commits is to waste the talents of Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Adam Scott, Emma Roberts, Zosia Mamet and more. Such a good cast was assembled and they were given absolutely nothing to work with, so I don't blame the performers. It's just such a shame to see such great talent put to the sword like this.

As if all of this wasn't enough, the movie also feels remarkably low budget and feels excruciatingly long despite its relatively short runtime.

Ultimately I think this film suffered because it was clearly intended as a set up for a wider Spider-Woman franchise which is unlikely to come to fruition. There seemed to be no interest in making a good stand alone movie, and no respect for the audience. A massive waste of time.

It's astonishing to think that Sony could put out a worse product than 2022's Morbius, but boy, "Madame Web" manages it. It is an embarrassing mess. Talented stars wasted on probably one of the worst comic book movie ever (which nobody asked for). Filled with atrocious dialogue, awkward editing and laughable structure. It's a clunky, poorly-written, messy, and sloppy movie packed with some mediocre editing and performances.

The concept is interesting on paper, but it couldn't be saved due to it's terrible execution. "Madame Web" simply lacked the spark it needed in nearly every dept.

There is simply nothing memorable in this movie, except maybe some superhero costumes, but that doesn't redeem the fact that the movie is bad.

So yeah..."Madame Web" is yet another disappointing entry in the Sony's Spider-Less universe. It's like a love letter to an era of superhero films that people largely want to forget. The "Pepsi" adds are stand-out, it falls short of what could have been a decent movie in the hands of someone else twenty years ago.

I understand what the plan was here. They wanted a trippy film, focusing on a strong future for the Sony verse. The problem is the delivery. The camera work in this movie made it quite irritating to follow, as there was constant quick close up shots of the action. The dialogue was awful, and there was quite a lot of blatant voice over during the villain scenes.

So much wasted time was given to boring scenes in the movie, which led me to believe the screen writers finished the script and realised that it was under the word count.

Honestly the acting quality was quite poor across the board, especially the villain, who honestly seems as if they didn't cast for his role at all, just picked up someone off the side of the road.

For someone who's guilty pleasure is watching bad movies, I it was a painful time. Don't recommend.