"Morbius is basically The Godfather when compared to this film."
— tyler on Letterboxd
Madame Web
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| Madame Web | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Morbius: I am the worst movie based on a comic book to ever be released!
Madame Web: Oh, you're a horrible superhero movie alright, but not the worst of its kind. Morbius: Yeah? What's the difference? Madame Web: GETTING SHOT IN QUEENS WITH A BOTTLE OF PEPSI!! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"I was at the dentist today for an hour and a half with imagine dragons playing in the background the whole time and I can’t believe that wasn’t the most painful experience I had today"
— Diamondbolt
"When you take madamebility, you will gain powerful webilities"
— NicoPico on Letterboxd
"When Morbius was way better, you know you’ve done f**ked."
— Crinja on Letterboxd
"As someone who despised Morbius, it was way better than this."
— 3C Films
Madame Web is a 2024 American superhero film based on Marvel Comics featuring the character of the same name. Produced by Columbia Pictures and Di Bonaventura Pictures in association with Marvel Entertainment and TSG Entertainment, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing, it is the fourth film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU).
Plot
Cassandra "Cassie" Webb is forced to confront her past while trying to survive with three young women with powerful futures who are hunted by a deadly adversary.
Why Its Web Broke Apart
- Much like Morbius (which also shares the same writers), the pacing is awful. Scenes like the opening drag on with not much happening while events in the story feel more like random events rather than a flowing story.
- Despite being part of Sony's Spider-Man Universe, there's not much connection to those films. Uncle Ben and Peter's mother Mary are in it, along with an infant Peter Parker, but that's it. Even Morbius was more connected to the Spider-Man Universe than this.
- Despite featuring Madame Web and the other three Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter; here called Julia Cornwall, Mattie Franklin, and Anya Corazon), only Web gets any power. None of the other Spider-Woman get any powers, costumes, or even fight the main antagonist, which only begs the question of the purpose of their existence other than to drive the story forward.
- The characters range from boring to unlikable.
- Madame Web/Cassie Webb is your bland hero with parental issues.
- She also does many questionable antics that make her look like the villain. She steals a taxi and an ambulance, kidnaps three girls without their consent (although to be fair they were in danger), leaves the three girls out in the woods just to look at some notes, and lashes out at them for leaving the campsite without her permission despite leaving them at the campsite alone, to begin with.
- The other three Spider-Woman are also just as unlikable, like leaving a campsite to hang out with rowdy teens.
- Ezekiel, the main antagonist, is the worst character in the film, as his only motive is not to die from the Spider-Woman who seeks to kill him without any reason to. You could leave this motive out and not much of the film will change. It should also be noted that Ezekiel in the comics was a heroic character who fought alongside Spider-Man, making his portrayal inaccurate.
- Madame Web/Cassie Webb is your bland hero with parental issues.
- Inconsistent tone, with its serious moments almost feeling like a parody.
- Shockingly awful cinematography, making it appear more like a fan film or a superhero show from the CW.
- The editing is messy with jump cuts, shaky cams, and poor close-ups that once again, feel more like a fan film than a proper film.
- If the poor cinematography and editing aren't enough for you, some of the soundtracks sound very similar to Insomniac's Spider-Man game, and one scene near the end where the camera zooms up a building outright copies a scene in Spider-Man 2 where Peter Parker puts on his Spider-Suit and swings up the very same building.
- For a movie set in 2003, it certainly does not show a movie set in 2003 thanks to numerous anachronisms.
- Probably the most infamous is when Cassandra meets up with a subway passenger playing on a Playstation Portable, despite the console releasing in 2004 in Japan and a year later in North America.
- The Pepsi logos used in the film use the modern logo instead of the 2003 variant.
- The One Vanderbilt Building is shown in the New York City skyline despite not having started construction in 2016 and being completed in 2020, 17 years after this movie takes place.
- Factual Error: In the scene where Cassandra is shown getting arrested after walking onto the Grand Central Subway platform before Ezekiel jumps her and the group, the station which if you look closely says is served by the (4) (5) and (6) trains. But the station is shown as a local station with one platform and two tracks, when in reality it is an express station with two platforms and four tracks. Also the train seen passing by the station in the same scene appears to have four doors on each side, this is also inaccurate as the numbered lines of the NYC Subway run train cars that are shorter and with three doors on each side. The longer train cars with four doors only run on the lettered lines (Exc. the 42nd Street Shuttle), none of which serve Grand Central.
- Product Placement: Specifically Pepsi and Mountain Dew (which are owned both by PepsiCo), and Blockbuster. There was an infamous scene in the climax in which Ezekiel gets killed by the "P" on a Pepsi sign, and many joked online that this movie was a giant Pepsi commercial.
- Awful dialogue like "Ben gets to be an uncle... all of the fun and none of the responsibility." and "When you take on the responsibility, great power will come."
- Atrocious costumes that look like they were fished from a costume store.
- Action scenes range from being shot in the dark which makes it hard to tell what's going on, too much shaky cam, or big explosions that overindulge what should be a simple fistfight.
- Adding onto that leads to a massive plot-hole: Cassie can see into the future and implies to Mary and Ben that Web knows Mary is going to die soon, leaving her child Peter under Ben's care. Why doesn't Madame Web do anything that averts her death from a plane crash like in the comics?
- The ending is just sequel bait that will most likely never happen given the results of this film.
Redeeming Qualities
- The performances are good, with Dakota Johnson doing a good job as the character. Likewise, the other actors aren't so bad. It's just that the writing is so awful that it ruins the delivery.
- It does feel slightly different from other superhero movies by having a more "grounded" and "realistic" feel, but Logan was way better than this.
- The 2003 setting is nice, despite the historical inaccuracy.
- The movie can be seen as "so bad, it's good" (even and especially for a superhero movie) with a great and an amazing handful of unintentionally funny laughs and hilarious moments in the movie here and there when you are watching.
Reception
Madame Web has been panned by critics and audiences, with it being called the "worst comic book/superhero movie" yet, even more so than Morbius. Currently, it sits at 11% of 255 critics' reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie currently sits at a 3.9/10 on IMDb.
It underperformed at the box office with an opening weekend of only $17.6 million. It grossed just over $100 million worldwide, which is considered insufficient to break even and making it the lowest-grossing film to date in Sony's Spider-Man Universe.
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