Spoilers: ‘Madame Web’ was really, really bad

By Cole Skuse

I want to preface this article by saying that while I am a big Marvel fan, I’m not a huge movie-watcher. I am not overly critical of the movies I watch, and I couldn’t tell you the last movie that I didn’t enjoy watching. “Madame Web” single-handedly changed that for me — it was irredeemably bad. I watched “Morbius” the day after I saw “Madame Web,” and honestly, “Morbius” was the better movie — at least there were parts I could make fun of. “Madame Web” was a bad movie with very little to joke about.

After watching the movie, I went back to watch the official trailer that made me interested in seeing it. I wanted to know how Sony managed to make an interesting trailer for a movie like this, and I realized that someone in their marketing team just pulled all the okay-to-good-quality scenes from the movie and made a three-minute trailer out of it.

“Madame Web” is a movie that I wanted to be good, but there’s no possible way to excuse how bad parts of it are. While Dakota Johnson did a good enough job as Madame Web, pretty much all the other people in this movie were subpar. Anytime the main villain, Ezekiel Sims, spoke, I cringed; I’m sure Tahar Rahim is a good actor, but he was not meant for this role or writing.

Speaking of writing, it was all over the place. There were parts when it was solid, trying to tell the backstory of Madame Web. At other times (like the last 30 minutes), it was pure garbage. What do you mean, “With great responsibility follows great power”? The inversion of Spider-Man’s iconic “With great power comes great responsibility” line makes no sense, but is indicative of all the movie’s problems — it was trying to be a Spider-Man movie without being a Spider-Man movie.

I think that it’s possible for a movie to do this, but I don’t think Sony has built itself up enough to achieve it. In the grand scheme of things, Madame Web is a side character in the comics and has connections to what’s called the Web of Life and Destiny. This is the basis of Madame Web’s powers in the movie… except it’s never explained in the movie what it really is or how Madame Web uses it. Why are her visions sometimes accurate and sometimes not? Why did three Madame Webs suddenly appear in the final fight? The world may never know, and honestly, that’s for the best.

At times, the writing and cinematography were sickening. Serious scenes felt like they were getting taped as part of a sitcom thanks to the movements of the cameras. Some of the lines felt so out of place, like Madame Web having a vision of her mom giving birth and dying in the Amazon and asking “Why did you hate me?” What do you mean, “Why did you hate me?” She never even got the chance to meet you!

There’s also this really awkward scene in the middle of the movie that feels so out of place because it is so clearly foreshadowing. Madame Web is in a hotel room with the three girls she has been trying to save from the main villain of the movie, and she teaches them how to do chest compressions because the villain has venom that can cause cardiac arrest. That reasoning felt flimsy at best, and lo and behold, during the final 10 minutes, Madame Web almost drowns and the three girls have to do chest compressions to save her.

I think the last 30 minutes really sum up the quality of the movie. We see the three girls that Madame Web was trying to save throughout the movie come back to Madame Web’s apartment and they exchange some cheesy dialogue about how Madame Web can see better now than ever before because she’s blind. Oh yeah, Madame Web got hit perfectly across the eyes with a firework in the final battle and is now blind. I don’t think I’ve rolled my eyes harder than during that scene.

You have to wonder at what point someone involved in the making of a movie like “Madame Web” goes, “Wow, this movie is bad.” I’m betting there was at least one underpaid intern on that set that knew it was going to be an awful movie. Sony, please start listening to that intern, because they clearly have a better idea of how to make a movie than a lot of your producers do.

With how bad “Morbius” and “Madame Web” were, I have little hope for the future of Sony’s Marvel Universe. “Kraven the Hunter” comes out in August, and I haven’t learned my lesson, so I’ll probably go see it. Maybe one day, Sony will make a Marvel movie so bad that I will learn my lesson, but today is not that day.