Movie Review: Madame Web

Madame Web (2024)

This is the fourth movie in "Sony's Spider-Man Universe", which currently comprises of the two Venom movies, the Morbius movie and the Kraven the Hunter movie. And, hey, this movie technically actually has Spider-Man in it. Or, well, Peter Parker. 

Making a movie out of Madame Web is an interesting one. To the uninitiated, Madame Web started off in the comics as a clairvoyant ally of Spider-Man, before being adapted as an extradimensional ally that facilitated inter-dimensional crossovers in the 90's cartoon, a niche that most video-game and comic-book adaptations of her have taken and ran with. 

To pick her over... over literally more than two dozen other spider-related characters to make a movie is most certainly an interesting choice. And, just like most of Sony's non-Venom-related movies, this one was not the best superhero movie. I do maintain that this movie is a lot more fun to watch than Morbius, but it definitely felt bloated for a movie with a 1 hour and 54 minute runtime. You could easily trim a lot of fat from this movie without losing too much. 

It didn't help that the promotions for this movie promised something completely different. The promotions focused very heavily on both the adversary -- Ezekiel Sims, a man affected by the 'Spider-Totem' spirits in the comics, now turned into a straight-up villain -- and not one, not two, but three Spider-Women. Julia Carpenter Cornwall, Maddie Franklin and Anya Corazon. Now admittedly they did cut out the two most prominent Spider-Women (Jessica Drew and Gwen Stacy) but subjective costuming choices aside, the trailers set this movie up as Madame Web training a group of new superheroes. 

The movie is no such thing. Julia, Maddie and Anya show up in costume for maybe a grand total of two minutes, in a 'flash-forward' vision and in an epilogue scene. 

Which... okay, not the biggest problem out there. There have been movies with misleading trailers that end up being pretty good. But Madame Web kind of... it's just there. The story and the character concept isn't the worst thing out there -- if they actually do something with it. Cassie's mother was killed in a Peru rainforest while researching what's basically magic spiders by Ezekiel Sims, who's the bad guy of this movie. All of this, by the way, is completely original to the movie -- comic-book Madame Web has no interactions with either Ezekiel or Ben. 

After a rather awkward (and surprisingly long, for how much the movie itself recaps it) prologue, we get to see baby Cassie be rescued by a bunch of jungle-dwelling spider-people tribes, before we get to see grown-up Cassie Webb, a grouchy EMT that has absolutely shitty people skills. In perhaps one of the few good twists the movie does, Cassie actually works alongside Ben Parker, a.k.a. Peter's Uncle Ben. Throughout the first act of the movie we get to see Cassie as she basically zero-social-skills through life, and accidentally stumbles upon all three kids that would become her charges later on in this movie. 

And the movie just... kind of really flounders around a lot. After a near-death experience, Cassie starts getting moments of seeing into the future... or rather, experiencing the future before she gets deja vu'd back in time. There are some okay banter between Cass and both Ben and their doomed paramedic friend O'Neill, but the movie just kind of... again, it's not the most interesting thing to watch at this point. 

Ezekiel has also gained some spider-abilities from the magic spider, with the ability of poisoning people with touch, sticking on walls, as well as prophetic dreams of his eventual death. This disturbs him a lot, and he ends up somehow acquiring a super-advanced facial recognition software with his lackey Amaria. (The movie literally forgets about Amaria or this super-high-tech device around halfway through the movie). 

And so begins a game of cat-and-mouse where Cassie takes a while to realize what's going on. Ezekiel stalks these girls in a black spider-suit that people have compared to a CW show attempt, and while I did like the sequence in the trains where the movie did a rather okay job at portraying the tension and confusion, as well as how menacing Ezekiel is by not showing him up too much... the movie then kind of really flounders a lot afterwards. We get Cassie leaving the three girls Julia (who's a dork), Mattie (who's abrasive and angry) and Anya (who's the savvy one) in the jungle while she goes back and does some 'research'. And... I kind of get what they're trying to go with Cassandra Webb's characterization, but it's just so... so bland.

The three girls themselves maybe get a couple of nice lines between them, but it's also obvious that the scripting and direction don't really fit the three particularly well. I feel like the actresses are also kind of confused at how old their characters are supposed to be, and... and they kind of honestly blur together to me despite the amount of time the movie tries to spend with them. Eventually the common thread falls into place that all three of them are kind of abandoned and have nowhere to go, leading Cassie to essentially adopt them at the end of the movie. Now this in and of itself isn't a bad plot development at all... but it's also done so inorganically, and Cassie spends so much time vacillating between "you know what, why am I doing this" and "I need to protect my girls!!!" in the most unconvincing manner. I think the way this could've worked is if we really hammered home either her reluctance or some kind of manic energy, but as it is, it's just all very unconvincing.

Actress Dakota Johnson has apparently also expressed frustration with the blue-screens and difficulty in acting in a superhero movie, and I believe her considering how different the energy of her acting efforts are when it's a physical scene where she's talking with Ben or the girls, versus anything with action scenes going around. 

So... yeah. I really wish I had something to say about Ezekiel, but he's literally just there, a quiet, menacing threat with ambiguous motivations. We get an action scene in a diner that goes on for a bit too long, Cassie gets poisoned, drops the girls in Ben's house (coincidentally, Ben's sister Mary is pregnant and about to give birth) and within the span of five minutes flies to Peru, gets a flashback vision, gets some exposition about how this ancient super-special spider-tribe has abilities, and then flies back. Oh, and Cassie's mom is actually good all along, having flown to Peru in order to research a cure to save her unborn daughter from her genetic disease. It's all so awkwardly and clunkily framed, and I really wished that they had merged this with Cassie's earlier "do some research with documents in my house" scene. 

Anyway, we get the final battle scene, which of course also has Ben Parker having to bring Mary Parker to the hospital because she's about to go into labour with baby Peter Parker (which is the aforementioned cameo). We get some car stunts before the fight goes onto the surface of a fireworks factory, and Cassie kind of abuses her future-vision to help the girls survive, setting up traps and making sure the giant neon sign would eventually fall on Ezekiel and squish him. Oh, and at some point, Cassie unlocks the ability of... uh... replicating herself because of her time-seeing powers, which rescues all three Spider-Girls from certain doom. 

The movie closes off with Cassie in a more comics-accurate 'blind woman on a wheelchair' Madame Web getup, promising to mentor the three kids into Spider-Women. 

And... and that's it. The movie, I think, is just... really confused with the tone and pacing. I'm not sure if the movie would be better with more action or less action, because I could really see an argument either way -- a climax where Madame Webb is already paralyzed in the second act, but mentors the three girls into being three Spider-Women would be cool; but I could also see an argument for a movie that treats Ezekiel just as a threat to be dealt with, not fought, which would definitely play to the cast's strengths. The movie is also just way too long and very inconsistent in what characterization they want to come off from Cassandra Webb, which... yeah. I don't know. The tension's kind of flat (I would've much preferred a straight-up thriller with superhero elements, if that's what you want to go) and I don't think I end up really caring for any of the characters at the end of the movie. It's... it's all right, but at least Morbius was funny, y'know? This one just kind of drags on. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Madame Web (Cassandra Webb) is a supporting character for Spider-Man, an elderly blind and paralyzed woman suffering from myasthenia gravis, and connected to a life support system that resembles a spider-web. She has mutant abilities allowing her clairvoyance, and continues to be a supporting character until the 90's Spider-Man cartoon reinvents her (voiced by Stan Lee's wife, Joan Lee) as a cosmic entity that is able to use her web to see and interact with different universes through space-time. This incarnation would be used in the video-game Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
  
• Her final superhero look is a combination of comics Madame Web as well as Julia Carpenter's tenure as the second Madame Web. 
• Ezekiel Sims is a supporting (if selfish) ally to Spider-Man in the somewhat controversial J. Michael Straczynski run on the comics. Ezekiel managed to ritualistically gain powers similar to Spider-Man, and tells Spider-Man that they are both connected to the mystical 'spider totem'. Ezekiel would aid Spider-Man in fighting a vampire-like entity called Morlun, and died giving his life to protect Spider-Man.
• In the flash-forward to his future death, Ezekiel has gray hair and doesn't wear shoes, which is how he primarily appears in the comics. During the few times that he stalks the women without a suit, he's also not wearing shoes. His 'spider-suit' is original to the movie. 
• Julia Carpenter is the second Spider-Woman in the comics. She was tricked into participating in a secretive government group called The Commission, who injected her with a mixture of spider venom and exotic plants, giving her spider powers. She was drawn into the cosmic conflict called the Secret Wars, where she adopted the mantle of Spider-Woman before being drawn into the Avengers, SHIELD and other organizations. She goes by Arachne, sometimes, when Jessica Drew returns as Spider-Woman. After Cassandra Webb's death, Julia would take over as the second Madame Web.
• Her outfit in this movie is based on her original and most iconic Spider-Woman suit.
• Her incarnation in this movie uses her pre-marital surname, Cornwall.
• Mattie Franklin is the niece of J. Jonah Jameson, and the third Spider-Woman. She is an obsessed Spider-Man fan, who ends up getting spider-powers after infiltrating an organization called the 'Gathering of Five'. She faces off against Madame Web's granddaughter, Charlotte Witter, who manages to steal the powers of multiple other Spider-Women, before Mattie defeats her and takes the powers for herself (notably the power to create four 'psychic' spider-legs from her back). However, Mattie would ultimately be killed by the Kravinoff family during the events of Grim Hunt.
• Mattie's look in this movie is based on her third (and most iconic) costume in the 2000's run, albeit without 'armpit webs'.
• Anya Corazon is a superhero in the comics known as Araña, and later on the third person to be Spider-Girl. She was caught in a fight between two mystical clans, and was nearly killed. A member of the Spider Society (an organization affiliated with Ezekiel) performs a magical ritual that gives her spider-like powers. As Araña, Anya has the ability to create a chitin-like endoskeleton around her body.
• Anya's superhero outfit in this movie is based on her black-and-silver Spider-Girl look.
• Mary Parker mentions that she has no idea 'where in the planet' her husband is in. Various comic-book runs (and notably the Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man movies) have established that they are international spies. 
• Mattie briefly suggests that they call her uncle Jonah, who of course refers to long-running Spider-Man character J. Jonah Jameson. 
• A couple of Daily Bugle newspapers make brief cameos throughout the movie.