The movie Madame Web (in theaters February 14) does not have her most iconic line.
That is to say, the moment she launched thousands of memes (at least in my gay corner of the internet) only appears in the trailer. In the genuine film, new visionary paramedic Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) doesn’t say “she was in that frame of mind with my mom exploring bugs just before she kicked the bucket.” Those words are in the movie, coordinated by S.J. Clarkson does both with style and feebleness, yet they are never assembled in a specific order.
Which may prove a disappointment to those hoping to see Madame Web in her imagined camp form. There are plenty of other idiosyncrasies present in the film, especially in its final minutes, but otherwise Madame Web is a quiet affair: not entirely terrible, but certainly not good, passable, or as memorable as expected. It’s a strange film whose tortured existence is most compelling.
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Here we have a movie that is clearly connected to the Spider-Man universe, and yet seems unable to connect directly to that lore. It’s 2003, and Cassie is the friend and ambulance companion of Ben Parker (Adam Scott), who will one day become Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man’s beloved, doomed uncle. Ben’s sister-in-law (Emma Roberts) is pregnant with a boy we know as Peter, and yet his name is never revealed. It seems like that name was definitely uttered at the end of the movie, before Sony panicked and decided to make Madame Web more independent. But in the theatrical cut, it’s just an awkward tease: Madame Web is either unnecessarily shy or the victim of a trash job, depending on how generous you want to be.
How do we feel about superhero movies these days? Not great, if recent box office numbers (and reviews!) are any indication. Madame Web feels like a relic of the recently ended glory days, a risky intellectual property investigation that could have worked at least a little better about seven years ago. Or maybe not. The film is reminiscent of the pre-Iron Man era of comic book adaptations: it bears more stylistic kinship to Halle Berry’s devastating Catwoman (2004) than anything that’s recently come out of the Marvel factory. The question is whether Clarkson is doing this intentionally; He adds plenty of period touches to her film (including a vintage Beyoncé poster, which references Martha Stewart’s imprisonment), but perhaps the entire film is a semi-ironic commentary on the aesthetic sensibilities of 20 years ago. Once again, it is more generous to assume that Madame Web is so self-aware.
Primarily, the film is a Pepsi commercial filled with a strangely underrated amount of exposition. Johnson, who is so charming in roles as diverse as 50 Shades of Gray and Suspiria, is a minimalist artist. The choice of him here – in a film that requires a certain dynamism, fluidity with silly language about poisons and bad omens – is an unfortunate mistake. So are Tahar Rahim as a Spider-Man villain (not Spider-Man) and Sydney Sweeney as one of three teenage girls targeted by Rahim’s Ezekiel Sims, an incomplete character whose existence is based on stalking teenagers and that of Zosia Mamet. is limited to intermittent techniques. talks.
Sweeney’s counterparts are played by Celeste O’Connor and Isabella Merced, who are lively actresses but only have very weak characters to play. In a follow-up movie shown at the end of Madame Web, he and Sweeney are destined for superhero greatness that will probably never happen. Everyone involved is caught in a bind of brand uncertainty; The only solid belief anyone can have is that he definitely likes a crispy Pepsi Cola on a hot day in New York City. (Or, at least, Boston pretends to be New York City.)
That said, I enjoyed Madame Web to such an extent that the film is primarily an unconventional chase movie, saturated with Clarkson’s interesting colors and curiously buoyed by the disconcerting coolness of Johnson’s performance. Something hidden in the film is the story of women united by destiny and choice who steal together in the night and try to stay alive. Johnson’s humor, as dry as London gin, gives Madame Web more personality than the canned satire and cynicism of most MCU films.
We should make this reasonable all along: the film Madame Web (in theaters February 14) doesn’t have her most famous line. In other words, the second she sent off a large number of images (in some measure in my gay corner of the web) just shows up in the trailer. In the veritable film, new visionary paramedic Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) doesn’t say “she was there of brain with my mother investigating bugs not long before she died.” Those words are in the film, composed by S.J. Clarkson does both with style and weakness, yet they are never gathered in a particular request.
Unfortunately, eventually the plot must build toward an action climax, and Johnson gets lost in a tangle of expository language. And Clarkson never puts Cassie’s supernatural gifts to good use. Cassie’s vision of the future could, in theory, make her an expert fighter, able to see an opponent’s punch moments before it actually happens. Instead, she crashes some cars and sets a fireworks warehouse on fire, but barely escapes disaster. I think that in the sequel Ms. Webb will gain full control of her abilities, which will probably only exist in the multiverse of our minds.
In the real world, Madame Web would have been a solitary exercise, a strange and erratic vision that would have existed once the superhero film industry found a way to sustain itself through its second decade. But despite constant product churn, increasingly complex interactions, and an inevitable lack of innovation, the powers that be have no end in sight. Some prophets, them.