By Lucas Castillo ’25
Spoilers ahead, I guess…
Well, boys – they did it. Sony rushed out another half-hearted, uninspired, and lazy adaptation of a Spiderman adjacent character that nobody cared, or cares, about.
The basic plot of the film is that Madame Web needs to protect three girls from a spider guy who is trying to kill them, as he saw into the future that they were going to turn into spider women and kill him. Why were they going to kill him? Of course, it’s because he was cursed by a tribe of Amazon spider people for shooting a pregnant lady, to get a spider from the Amazon, in order to get super powers and to get rich. Side note, how would getting a super spider suddenly make this guy rich? He’s not selling it, because we see him have it as a pet in the movie, and if he were selling its venom, then he would try to get more of them, and we only ever see one. Whatever… It’s not like one of the key aspects of his character is that he was broke, and now that he has wealth and power, doesn’t want to lose it all, so who cares how he got all of his wealth? This fact is not important, but I just want to mention it: the villain dies because the giant P in a Pepsi sign drops on him, why?! Plus, I would like to know how Madame Web got her mother’s spider notebook, when the last we saw it was in a secluded campsite in the middle of the Amazon! Now, this doesn’t seem important, at least to the writers, but the book is the main reason why our characters know what the heck is going on! It’s these types of causal, nonsensical moments that really show how little attention was paid to the very basic structure of this film’s plot.
God help us all! This movie has some of the worst dialogue of any comic book movie, heck, any movie that I’ve seen in recent time, and I’ve watched Black Adam. The only thing that makes the dialogue at all bearable is the actors’ decent performances. To be fair, this isn’t another “the world is going to end!” Superhero story that we’ve seen a billion times. So, Madame Web gets 2 points for originality, which brings its total to -239. Good for them! The villain’s dialogue and voice acting is so boring, stilted, and lifeless that it makes every single scene with him in it infinitely worse. If I have to hear him rattle off his paper thin motivations again, then I am going to lose it! Weirdly enough, it also seems as if most of his voice lines don’t line up with his mouth movements, giving his delivery a bizarre and disorienting undertone. All of this, coupled with the fact that this guy, as far as I’m concerned, cannot act for his life, makes this villain one of the worst comic book movie villains of all time. I could spend a lifetime complaining about this guy, but I don’t want to devote more time, thought, and effort to complaining about this character than the writers did writing his character.
Now, to talk about the only redeeming quality of this film, the characters! They’re all fine. The three girls – Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor – did a pretty good job with what they were given, with them bouncing off of each other and Dakota Johnson (Madame Web) pretty well. I really did like their dynamic and their bonding over their dysfunctional upbringings. These three girls, plus Ben, make this movie not only bearable, but also decently enjoyable. I feel like Dakota Johnson phoned in her performance this time, mainly, I assume because the script wasn’t very good. I’m not saying that she did a bad job, as many of her scenes were pretty good, but I don’t know if it was just the bad writing or some bad directing, but many of her lines and deliveries felt dry and emotionless. I don’t blame any of them for this, as many of them were trying to do the best with what they were given.
Now, is Madame Web a completely worthless experience? Maybe, but it’s not a completely awful one, and that counts for something. So, in my personal, and all but factual, opinion, I would give Madame Web a solid 5 out of 10. Go watch Bob Marley: One Love in theaters now!
