There have been many terrible superhero movies over the years. Batman and Robin, The Amazin Spider-Man 2…Morbius. Sony seems very interested in adding to this pile. Other than Morbius, they have more movies announced to be coming eventually. The one that has just come out is Madame Web, who is normally an old lady, but is now Dakota Johnson. I had low expectations going into this one, and I was still disappointed. I might even say that Morbius was better.
Ok I’m just going to say it, the plot’s terrible. It all hinges on one thing. The villain, who wears a Spider-Man suit for…reasons, has visions that the main characters will kill him one day. Now, there are many ways he could have dealt with this. Therapy, preparing to not lose, but no. He just sort of gets the technology from every action movie lately that can find anyone anywhere. He wants to knock them off before they become a threat. This would work if he was good at his job. He is such a worthless villain that he makes The Riddler from Batman Forever look threatening. He never does anything worthwhile for the whole movie.
The protagonists aren’t much better either. Madame Web, who does in fact have Web in her name, is a first responder. You would think this means she wants to help people. The second she has to help the other three girls, she wants to dump them with their parents. They were just attacked by someone only they saw and she decides going home is the best bet. The others are not much better either. They’re just there to be there. They do nothing to help the plot out. All three of them are essentially McGuffins. And the best part? They never suit up in the movie. The trailers and the dream show them in costumes, but they never do. They don’t even get powers! We’re just supposed to guess how they get powers.
The dialogue is equally terrible. There are so few lines in the movie that sound like how an actual person would talk. It is either exposition, or just words that mean a whole lot of nothing. The only line in the movie that could have been memed, the whole, “He was with my mom in the Amazon…”, isn’t even in the movie! The one meme to come out of it didn’t even have a chance! They even butchered Uncle Ben’s mantra! What does, “When you take on the responsibility, great power will come,” mean?
Speaking of Uncle Ben, the biggest sin of the whole movie is the “witty” nods to Spider-Man stuff. Other than the mantra, they have Uncle Ben himself. And he’s played by the man who invented The Cones of Dunshire, for some reason. They also use Spider…Person so many times…too many times. They even say,” Ben’s so excited to be an uncle!” This does not make up for anything Sony. It just makes people wish they were watching an actual Spider-Man movie.
There is not a single redeeming quality to this movie. It does not even have any action to be entertaining. There is no meme potential, no stand-out performances by anyone, nothing. I was so bored I almost feel asleep near the end. This is coming from someone who grew up on Avatar and Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Even Morbius was more entertaining than this. At least you could laugh after that one. Madame Web makes you feel as empty as the theaters that showed it.
