Madame Web

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Here's an opportunity to talk a bit about how I feel about Sony and their "Spider-Verse". When it came to 'Venom' and 'Let There Be Carnage', they weren't great, but I enjoyed the execution of the titular characters. As for 'Morbius', it was just kinda "there" and ultimately forgettable. Nothing, however actually got completely under my skin until this, and even though none of the aforementioned titles were that good, this one takes the cake. All comic book/superhero universes combined, this is one of the worst modern titles I've seen yet.

Even upon hearing it was gonna be Sony's next project in their "Not-Spider-Man" line of 'Spider-Man' related films, I had to wonder who the hell was asking for it. The ONLY excuse I can think of is that they felt like they needed a hero to come in and battle all these villains Sony has been working on getting together. I'm no expert when it comes to the complete universe of 'Spider-Man', but I'm relatively sure that Madame Web is not nor has ever been a "main character" so much as a side character who's only ever popped up here and there. I seem to remember her being more of an old lady, as well, but I guess that's Hollywood for ya.

We open in Peru, 1973, where explorers Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) and his pregant partner, Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé) are in search of a rare spider that is said to have healing properties in its venom. Legend has it that the spider has given rise to a tribe in the area who have superior climbing and jumping abilities and... they're basically a tribe of "Spider-Men" who don't have web-shooters. Anyway, the spider is found, Ezekial betrays their exploration team and, in the process, leaves a dying Constance behind. The "Spider-Tribe" manages to save the baby, Cassandra, but (spoiler alert) Constance doesn't make it.

Fast-forward to 2003, where Cassandra (Dakota Johnson) works as a paramedic, accompanied by work partners *sigh* Ben Parker (Adam Scott), who's actually married to a Mary Parker (Emma Roberts), and O'Neil (Mike Epps). During one particularly dangerous call, "Cassie" has a near-death experience, and to make a long story short, she discovers that she can see into the future, giving her the ability to hopefully prevent future tragedy. Meanwhile, Ezekiel has developed limited precognition (among other Spider-Man related abilities including the ability to make his own Spider-suit that may get butts into theatre seast with a trailer).

Ezekiel's precogntion leads him to believe that three teenage girls, Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor).  would one day kill him, and his motivation through the film is as simple as "get to them before they get to him." The rest of it is essentally an escort mission movie involving Cassie protecting the teenagers from Ezekiel's constant attacks dressed as a dark Spider-Man. Alhough, I will be somewhat fair in that Ezekiel Sims' character does have similar abilities to Spidey in the comics, and each of the teenagers are representing different "Spider-Women" from the comics. So, I think I see what they were going for.

Usually, if I do a little bit of homework on these characters, I can find things the movie did that were "right", so to speak, but I have to say right off the bat that if you came to see these "Spider-Women" do their thing, you get a grand total of maybe about 30 seconds of action and most of the movie is just a guy who looks like a dark Spider-Man chasing the group around while Madame Web uses her abilities to protect them. At the end of the day, it's too many characters with nothing much happening, a bunch of easy-to-call cliches, and really bad dialogue including the line "If you accept the responsibility, the power will come" and if you know anything about 'Spider-Man', you know what line that is trying to be.

I'm genuinely curious to see where Sony goes from here, but it's not like with other properties that might have me excited for their futures. This is almost more like watching a very slow trainwreck happen, and it's baffling to me that Sony's animated 'Spider-Verse' movies with Miles Morales are so good while these live action flicks just keep failing harder and harder every time. If that's not enough, this comes from the writers of the hard fail that was 'Morbius', and directed by S.J. Clarkson, who was at the helm of 'Jessica Jones' and 'The Defenders', so this is about the level of quality we're looking at here.

1/5

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