Sony has another Spider-flop on their hands with Madame Web. This isn’t a great film, but it’s not the worst thing in the world either. Dakota Johnson stars are Cassie Webb, who becomes Madame Web in a film directed by S.J Clarkson. But whether it was good or bad, it was always doomed to flop. Let’s explore why.
Sony have the rights to the Spider-Man franchise and will continually pump out whatever movies they have to, to keep the rights of Spider-Man away from Marvel and Disney. It would seem that any film that is connected to Spider-Man featuring characters like Venom, Morbius or Madame Web may be enough to do the trick.
Many moons ago, Sony announced plans to make their own cinematic universe using Spider-Man characters just as Marvel had created the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This had a couple of false starts and along the way, Sony replaced Andrew Garfield with Tom Holland and cut a deal with Disney for Spider-Man to be integrated into the MCU. This was great for fans and the MCU Spider-Man films were all great.
But, whilst the MCU was richer for the trilogy of Spider-Man Homecoming, Far From Home and No Way Home, the Spider-Man activity happening over at Sony has been a mixed bag. Sony hit a home run with the Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse movies, but whilst these multiverse based films probably inspired the MCU film that brough Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland all together in one film, these were also animated films and separate from anything else they had going in live action.
Sony first released Venom, and then there has been Venom 2, Morbius and now Madame Web. Whilst the Spider-Verse films are seen as excellent in quality, with great writing, amazing animation and likeable characters, the live action films have been OK at best, and frankly some people think they’re awful.
This discussion is going to focus on Madame Web mostly, so won’t be as deep a review of Venom or Morbius, but these are films that are watchable, but are filled with plot holes, silly choices by characters and lots of cringe. That isn’t to say that they’re all bad, but they’re certainly no better than a lot of the films from DC that haven’t been received well, and then there is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It pains me to say that since The Avengers Endgame, the MCU has mostly shit the bed…to use the medical term. There have been some good films and shows including Spider-Man No Way Home, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, and WandaVision, but everything after that ranges from OK, but not great, like The Marvels, Loki and Thor 4, to ‘I don’t like this’ like The Eternals, Secret Invasion and She-Hulk.
But the thing is, after the first three phases of the MCU, where most of everything was at least good if not great or brilliant, the MCU had built up a decade’s worth of good will. IN the world of superhero movies, the MCU was the golden child, whilst the X-Men films were viewed as ‘when it’s good, it’s good and when it’s not, it’s horrible.’ The DCU films were mostly seen as let downs with the occasional ‘this one is better’ and the Sony Spider-Man films were seen as usually good, but some let downs.
But with the new Sony-Disney deal, it was clear that the Sony Marvel films were now starting to cross over with the MCU. Not just because of Andrew Garfield and Toby Maguire, but that Tom Holland’s Venom got dragged over to the MCU world at the end of Venom 2, only to be sent straight back in a post credit scene of No Way Home. Maybe the pandemic stopped a bigger plan for his involvement, but they did tease that some of the Venom symbiote was still in the MCU.
Likewise the end of Morbius showed us that Vulture, played by Michael Keaton from Spider-Man Homecoming was now seemingly trapped in Morbius’s universe. The point is, Sony were hoping to connect to the MCU and build their cinematic universe from it. But timing is everything and their joining the MCU didn’t start until the MCU was starting to fall apart.
And before we fully dive into all things Madame Web, it’s worth noting that the pandemic is part of the reason why some films haven’t done as well…and yes the excuse can still carry over years later. Allow me to explain. With the pandemic, people started to get used to the idea that movies will soon be on streaming services and so they don’t need to risk going to the cinema to see them. Spider-Man No Way Home is a good example of the exception here.
Rumours of the previous Spider-Men being in No Way Home were teased and trailers confirmed that the villains from those films were returning, so there was so much excitement. Spider-Man No Way Home is the perfect example of a film that people were desperate enough to see that even the pandemic was deemed worth the risk. But so many other movies that before the pandemic, would have been expected to do well flopped. This was a combination of audience not thinking those individual films were worth the risk of catching the virus, and that the wait time between seeing films in the cinema and seeing them at home were no shorter than ever. In fact there were some films that were on streaming day and date with the cinema.
But streaming is the other factor here. Netflix was a big deal and Amazon Prime Video existed, but the pandemic also coincided with Disney Plus, and later Paramount Plus, and HBO Max, and others and so there was more options for audiences to see new and exclusive content at home, so why bother to go to the cinema?
So, is the flop of the likes of Morbius and Madame Web simply because people can choose to wait eight weeks to see the films on streaming? Or that there is an infinite growing amount of cinema budgeted drek shows like Rings of Power and Secret Invasion to get viewers instead.
The answer is both of those, and also something more specific to Madame Web. No one knows who that character is and the trailer didn’t make it clearer or give any reason for Spider-Man fans to care.
Venom was successful, but Venom has probably become the most famous Spider-Man related character outside of Spider-Man himself. Venom was heavily featured in the third Toby Maguire Spidey film, and has been featured in solo comics, video games and more for years. Morbius and Madame Web…not so much.
The trailer for Madame Web didn’t even really show how this connects to Spider-Man well. We got a sense that there was a guy, who is Ezekiel Sims, played by Tahar Rahim, who is dressed in a knock off black Spider-Man costume who is the bad guy, and it looked like there were multiple versions of Spider-Woman or Spider-Girl in the film, but where did these come from? And who is the Madame Web character?
If anyone wasn’t sure and looked her up, they’d see that it’s meant to be an evil aunt May like grandmother who is paralysed, blind, old and can see into the future. Most of these may sound like a hard sell for the basis of a main chaarcter for an action movie. But hey, Daredevil and Echo have shown that superheroes with disabilities need not stop them. Grandmother though? We’ve had Halloween, Terminator and Texas Chainsaw as recent examples of kick ass grandmothers, so it’s just a new era…execpt they decided to make Madame Web 35 instead. Oh well. Also a lot of these kick ass elderlies haven’t done well. Look at the latest Indiana Jones movies for example.
But hey, Daredevil is blind, and it’s great to have characters from all walks of life shown to be heroic…although she is a villain. But…this being said, the first Daredevil movie wasn’t seen as good, didn’t get a sequel and it was only when it became a Netflix show that it became a bigger thing. Plus Daredevil was much bigger in the comics than Madame Web.
Sony did nothing to educate the audience on who Madame Web is, or why we should care. And clearly they didn’t have faith in portraying her as a paralysed, blind old lady, as spoiler warning, we don’t get a hint of any of that until the final couple of minutes of the film.
Instead, the film acts as something of a long origin story for the character, but also as an origin story for three Spider-Women, and this too is confusing.
I watched the film, but have no idea how this will tie into Venom, Morbius, or if there is meant to be a connection to any of the Spider-Man films from the past. The film is set I believe in 2003, but I’m not sure why. Maybe, so that 21 years later an older version of Madame Web will be able to be a villain to a current Spider-Man? But if they do this, the three teenage Spider-Women will be middle aged Spider-Women, and we’ll have skipped over all their best years as the character. It’d be like starting a Spider-Man character when he’s 35 and just referencing he’s had his powers since he was 16.
In this sense, much like how the MCU have used a lot of established characters in secondary roles in their own movies just to set up the next generation of young Avengers, Madame Web feels like she is less important in her own movie. It’s just an origin movie for three Spider-Women, and why it’s three and not just one, I don’t get.
The whole thing was something of a mess. They gave us a main character, who wasn’t particularly likeable, and made it an origin movie of her being a mentor to three much more interesting characters.
The three Spider-Women also only got limited screen time as a result and so I don’t really feel like any of them were well developed. This should have been called Spider-Woman or Spider-Girl and I’m pretty sure the film would have had better chances with audience at the box office because at least people would have instantly understood who the character is and that it’s basically the female equal to Spider-Man. Or they could have developed a Spider-Gwen movie as audiences have been well introduced to her in the Spider-Verse films and already had a better understanding of who Gwen Stacey was anyway.
And then there was the villain who in the trailer just looked like an evil Spider-Man. I’m sure some people may have even taken away from the trailer that this is just a universe where Spider-Man is the bad guy…but they already did the bad Spider-Man in Spidey 3, gave us a bad Spider-Man in Venom for all intents and purposes, and gave us Miles Morales who had a black Spider-Man suit in recent films. So who the hell was the new guy? Too much and too confusing.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Madame Web is a villain. So why is she the hero of this, and the mentor of the three Spider-Women? Sony are watering down Spidey villains just so they can make movies. Venom, Morbius, Madame Web, and the upcoming Kraven are all meant to be bad guys. Sure these days we’ve had Suicide Squad, and Joker, but every time you water down the bad guys you create the situation where you don’t want the heroes to defeat them.
You also make each film in this universe less special because each one is less special because there are more of them. And that would be fine if they were all great. Sony are nowhere near the oversaturation point that the MCU has put itself in, but still, since the pandemic, there has been two Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, the first of a two parter Spider-Verse film, and films of Venom, Morbius and Madame Web. And amazingly most of them don’t connect or build on one another. So it’s just a mess.
The last point I’ll make on Madame Web is that the film completely failed to have fun with it’s superhero concept or the powers in it. Evil spider dude wore a costume, but for no obvious reason. He just turned up to fight in a costume which we don’t know why he chose to make it look the way it does, but just kinda looks exactly like Spider-Man. Madame Web isn’t seen in a costume until the last minute of the movie and so for the rest of it, she’s just in regular every day clothes. Anyone opening an action figure of Madame Web will open what just looks like a Barbie or school teacher doll. Nothing cool. And the three Spider-Women are seen in costume, but literally only in visions of the future, so for the rest of it, anyone opening their Spider-triplets dolls will look like they’re opening Bratz dolls.
When it comes to powers, Madame Web can see into the future, and this could have been interesting like the Nick Cage movie Next where he can see two minutes into the future and we get all kinds of scenes where the time jumps back and forth to show us what he sees will happen and what then he does with this foresight. Madame Web makes her visions of the future often vague so I wasn’t even sure what she saw.
Things were often not clear enough for the audience to understand what it was she saw that she needed to do differently. No sense that she could see which way a punch was going so she could dodge it, or other than saving a pigeon we didn’t really see her see things that she then directly changed just after. Or maybe a little, like with the Spider-Women on a train and in a diner and the baddie gets them so she warns them, but there was the opportunity for her to drive and always dodge traffic and her foresight to be a great advantage and they didn’t make a good use of it.
Conclusion
All this said, and I will come back to my point that the film is watchable enough, but after seeing it once, it’ll probably only ever be a film that you’d watch if it just so happens to be on in a hotel and there’s limited other choices or you really want to do a Marvel marathon and this just so happens to have Marvel in the opening credits.
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