Madame Web (2024) | a Review
originally published on 19/02/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the spider-friend, G.E.M.Simov, a fellow with great appreciation for the weaving arts and the properties of silk, here to tell you about a tangled mess that goes by the name “Madame Web”.
Simple review details - I rank movies on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
A disclaimer - the terms 'movie' and 'film' will be used interchangeably in this review.
Presentation
Madame Web was a competently shot film, in the sense that it showed what it wanted to show and that, which was shown, was clear enough for the audience to read without needing much in the way of explanation or time to understand what is going on. However, at the same time, Madame Web featured some very odd choices when it came to its scenes, particularly its ‘action’ scenes, of which there were very few, and those that were present were very disinteresting, due to the fact that they all featured running away.
On top of that, those action scenes - all of them - had absolutely no weight to them, there was no suspense and there was no thrill, because of the fact that the Main Character can see the future and acts in ways that will prevent the bad things from happening. As a result of that, this movie should have focused on being centered around the solving of a mystery, or the resolution of some kind of conflict via conversation and such. Instead, the film fails to utilize its strengths - which wound up being an interesting and varied cast of Characters, as well as a set of curious conditions, such as the ability to see in the future - and goes on to be a weird, light-hearted ‘monster’ movie in which the monster ultimately fails to achieve anything.
There were some interesting shots in the movie, but they were marred by the fact that, interspersed, were scenes that featured lots of CGI, and the amount of CGI that was present in said scenes was so overwhelming, and it appeared to be so vapid, that there was no value to it.
Every single time that the Main Character’s powers kicked in, there was CGI, which not only blurred and distorted the picture, which worked at conveying that the Character was unable to use these powers well and that they were jarring for her, mentally, but also made it very difficult to suspend one’s disbelief. Another issue that showed up was that, over the course of the film, the Main Character becomes more proficient as using her powers, and she no longer exhibits any signs of straining herself whenever utilizing them, but when the audience is shown how she uses those powers, the effects that convey disorientation and stress are still present, creating a conflicting conveyance of whether she is or is not fully in control of herself.
Then, of course, there are a few other scenes that feature a “future”, which are marred by the distorting visual effects meant to convey that the future is being seen, and not the film’s present, but… Well, said scenes showcase a number of Characters in ‘Spiderman-based’ outfits which look incredibly… Well, bad! The outfits are incredibly clean, rubbery and stiff looking. The elements that are meant to obscure their faces and identities are completely superfluous and have absolutely no function (aside from looking a certain way) and every single shot of these Characters, dressed in these outfits, is so unbelievably corny, campy and, most appropriately, cringeworthy, that I found it difficult to sit through them - EVEN if those were the good Characters in the movie.
The only person with a superhero suit who looks half decent, and that’s a compliment in this case, is the villain, whose outfit does not reflect absolutely every single bit of light that winds up directed at it, whereas the other outfits are so glossy it’s unbelievable that they are the way they are, in part due to the fact that whenever there are outfits as glossy as those, we’re either talking about a parody, a comedy or a very, very bad choice. And even then, the villain’s outfit also looks somewhat odd, and there’s no good reason for it to be as it is.
Regardless, this movie has scenes that are nearly unwatchable, at least not in a serious manner, due to the fact that they feature actresses in ridiculous outfits, striking heroic poses and attempting to look cool, at which they, unfortunately, fail miserably. Then it also has many scenes of the villain looking a bit silly, when he needs to look threatening, menacing and dangerous. And then it also has scenes that look far too unbelievable and weird to be entertaining - those being the predominantly CGI scenes.
As a result of that, at least a third of the film is difficult to sit through. The number of scenes in which everything gets washed out and replaced with CGI, and there is so much of it that it’s literally just blurry, distorted effects and the face of the Main Character, the viewing experience becomes very unpleasant.
Not only that, but the movie also makes some very gratuitous mistakes when it comes to its musical accompaniment - there are songs that get played for no good reason, following scenes that have set a particular tone, which tone must be slowly departed from, so as to allow the viewer to absorb what has occurred in the scene. Instead of that happening, the movie enjoys picking out a song, with vocals, and blaring it immediately when the new scene begins, providing for a jarring shift that does not work too well.
There was one song that was diegetically inserted into the film, but its role in it was very superfluous and the scene it was part of could have easily worked without the song… And, in fact, the scene in question could have also opted to not exist.
That’s not to say that the movie doesn’t have its moments of being very passable. In fact, the oddity of those elements is almost swallowable in the first half of the movie, due to the rarity of them, or, rather, the more appropriate use of them. As an example, the villain does not get to be on screen for longer than half a second or one second at a time, when in his suit, and so he gets to not look too goofy, on account of the audience’s inability to get a good look at him. The CGI effects work far better, because the visual displeasure they provide is also being experienced by the Characters who are causing the appearance of said visual effects. That is all bundled up with the plot’s quality, at the start of the movie, being almost great. Alas, it all falls apart quite jarringly in the latter half, exacerbating the film’s issues. 1/3
Acting
There were actors in this movie, and they did some acting. I’m inclined to say that there was some of THE acting of all time in here, but that is not that great a sign.
The main Character is played by Dakota Johnson, but ‘played’ is a strong word, due to the fact that there isn’t much in the way of range when it comes to the emotions conveyed by Madame Web. She has a moment where she supposedly weeps in shock, but then she very quickly recovers and there are no signs of crying on her face, not even wetness in her eyes. Then there are some odd moments of her being way too calm for the situation she is in, which some could argue would work, due to her being a First Responder Medical Worker, but I doubt that being in deathly danger is something folks in that field are used to.
Then there’s the villain, played by Tahar Rahim, who also, much like Madame Web, has one general mood, which is serious and somewhat angry. There was an opportunity for him to have a remorseful look on his face at one point, but I could not interpret the expression as anything but the one he normally wears. There’s also something odd about the fact that most of his lines were added in post, which… Doesn’t bode well.
On the other hand, though, the three teenagers in the movie, who are played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor, are played relatively well. They have a lot more room to show emotions and I was left with the impression that they did a decently good job at doing their acting. Alas, the script was not very good (as will be revealed in the Story section of the review) so no matter how good the actors are, the performances are prone to come out a bit faulty.
The performances provided by the more supporting actors are a bit wooden, a bit uninspired, but they make do… Frankly, one of the best words for describing this movie’s acting would be campy, which is not very good, but it isn’t too bad. It is entertaining and relatively plausible, as it is in… Theater? 2/3
Story
Madame Web suffers from a very peculiar type of issue that I’ve seen quite rarely, and that I’d say is incredibly problematic in almost every single case that it appears. That would be it having a very interesting and promising story that starts off impressively strong, featuring a lot of intrigue and a large number of potential solutions, which winds up being concluded in the most unpleasant, uninspired manner possible.
In this case it would be the fact that the story starts off by setting up a number of opportunities for itself, which opportunities wind up being completely waylaid and ignored. In it, the main Character, Madame Web, gets her powers through inexplicable means, becomes proficient in using her powers through nearly as inexplicable means, the villain becomes less and less competent as the story goes on (without a particular reason) and the culmination is as bothersome as an itch caused by chlamydia.
I will spoil this story as best I can, because I think it is not good. As I spoil the story I will point out the faults that it showcases and the issues that it has, ultimately explaining why the story is not very good.
The film begins with a flashback to around 30 years ago, when a very pregnant mother Web is looking for spiders in Peru, with a bodyguard named Ezekiel. She finds the spider, which Ezekiel has secretly been looking for, and he takes it by force, ultimately shooting mother Web. As he does so, the audience is presented with his reasoning - which builds up a bit of a believable Character for him, establishing that he’s had a very rough life and that good will is something he has no faith in, as a result of which he believes that power is all that there is to things. He gets the spider - and through its bite, power - while mother Web is discovered by AN ENTIRE TRIBE OF SPIDERMEN, which makes being Spiderman very much less unique and special, who manage to bring her to their cavern, wherein she is bitten by one of the special spiders in hopes of saving her.
Unfortunately, she dies, but she manages to give birth to her healthy daughter, Madame Web (not called such by anyone in the movie, but referred to as such by yours truly for the duration of this review). Madame Web becomes an Ambulance Driver/First Responder, and she’s pretty good at her job. The audience is shown a bit of her daily life, which builds her up as a relatively relatable Character, and while that happens there are a few interactions with a number of other, somewhat particular Characters.
Then, as she’s saving a guy from a car crash on a bridge, the car falls off the bridge and she winds up in the water, drowning for three minutes. Somehow, that unlocks her latent powers (though if it were going to unlock her latent powers, it makes no sense that her straight up dying would be the cause). Here is the first issue - the movie goes on to establish that her powers work as the infamous “Spidey sense”, which simply indicates to one in question (typically Spiderman) that something bad will happen.
Madame Web’s powers don’t just make her feel that something bad will happen, they literally show her every single minute detail of that bad thing happening, and then she is back to the moment before that bad thing starts happening. Thus, her latent powers seem as though they should have awakened as she got into the car to get the car crash victim out of it - not after she drowned (and got rescued by her partner, Ben Parker[that’s a reference]) - so that the powers could work in the context of the story that is being told.
Regardless, she then goes on to have a few weird moments with those powers, including an instance in which she sees the death of a friend/colleague and attempts to prevent it but in a very soft, meager way. He winds up dead, she gets checked out and gets told to take a break. She then gets through a similar sequence of events but involving a pigeon killing itself by slamming itself into her window, which she foresees and then just leaves the window open, allowing the pigeon to come in, hoot at her, and then leave.
Then, en route to that particular deceased colleague’s funeral, she encounters those three particular Characters (currently known to the audience, unknown to her). Then, she gets visions of each of those Characters, who are all teenage girls, getting murdered by a dude (who the audience knows is Ezekiel).
Now, prior to this scene there is another scene in which the audience is shown Ezekiel, who has become unfathomably wealthy, going to an opera and seducing a woman. Turns out that woman works for the NSA. Turns out that Ezekiel has been having the same vision of three women (who are clearly slightly older versions of the teenage girls) showing up and killing him. He uses his Spiderman Powers (funky poison) to get a password from the NSA lady, then kills her regardless, and uses that password to get his accomplice access to the super tracking tech the NSA is working on. His accomplice uses the super tracking tech to find the three teenagers, so that Ezekiel can kill them and prevent his death.
Now, Madame Web has seen that she can save the lives of those whom she sees dying if she is adamant about her intervention - as she was in the case of the dove, rather than the case of her colleague - and so she gets very concerned and intervenes, saving the three girls.
Lots of cops wind up hurt in the ensuing chase, and what happens is that the assaults on the policemen, and a kidnapping of the three teenagers, is pinned on her. She drives them off to a forest and, following a discussion in which a buzzword (spider) is said, Madame Web gets a revelation. She goes back home to read through her mother’s stuff and realizes that Ezekiel has that peruvian spider juice in him, and that her mother knew him.
However, the three teenagers, who are left alone and hungry, go to a nearby diner to have some food. That is a stupid decision, but it could be argued that it isn’t one that is out of Character. Up until this point, it has been established that two of the three girls have problems with authority, and that the third girl feels like an outcast and desperately wants to somehow fit in. Thus, the rebellious lass convincing them to go get some food at the diner, and the other two going along, makes sense.
Then, a good samaritan gets a look at them and reports to the police. Ezekiel’s accomplice intercepts, informs Ezekiel, and he, having sneaked into the police’s communications, informs them that those are not the missing persons. Now, here is where another problematic moment occurs.
The girls get flirty with a group of boys, ultimately ending up on top of the boys’ table and dancing. That’s very stupid, considering the situation they are in, and it is so stupid that it cannot reasonably be excused via the statement that they are teenagers, at least not to me. Fortunately, the fact that they are doing this has absolutely no bearing on the story, as a result of which it is just a silly moment and an excuse to play a Shakira song.
That said, Ezekiel shows up, kills them (and Madame Web), and leaves… Only that was a vision Madame Web had, so she drives a taxi she stole right through the diner’s doors and slams into Ezekiel. The girls hop onto the taxi and they hightail it out of here - oddly enough, this is where the potential for greatness appears. At that moment, Ezekiel manages to inject some poison into Madame Web’s hand, and they make a point of it hurting and the girls notice it and so on…
But then that poison actually does not do anything and it just magically goes away. It never has any bearing AT ALL on the story, with the exception of the fact that it spurs Madame Web to teach the teenagers CPR, which comes in handy at the very end. This is a very problematic moment, because I’d argue that an incredibly ornate and interesting Chekhov’s gun is traded in for an incredibly standard, uninteresting Chekhov’s gun - that being the poison being deposed in favor of the CPR training.
Madame Web takes the girls to a motel, whilst having internal quarrels with whether or not to leave them. They manage to present sob stories regarding their conditions, which winds up convincing her that she ought to stay with them. Still, just before being totally convinced, she does decide to hightail it out of there, going back to… The diner.
There, she encounters Ezekiel, who is informed by his accomplice, in a previous scene, that the woman with the teenagers is Madame Web, daughter of mother Web, and he’s a bit befuddled by that. Regardless, he is at the diner, and he has a conversation with Madame Web, urging her to back off and uncovering some particulars of his reasoning. He does not want to lose what he has built up and he reinforces the idea that power is all that matters.
Madame Web then wakes up in the motel, which indicates that this was all a vision, yet Ezekiel somehow knows that he has had that conversation with her when next they encounter one another. That is very problematic and remains completely unexplained for the remainder of the movie.
Then, Madame Web teaches the girls CPR, tells them a bit about the situation and informs them that she needs to go to Peru to figure out what’s what. The girls are, understandably, not pleased, but they wind up going along - she gets help from her colleague, Ben (Parker, whose sister-in-law is super pregnant), and then inexplicably, while WANTED for kidnapping and assaulting (perhaps even killing) an officer of the law, Madame Web gets a flight to Peru, which means she went to an airport with her busted up, stolen taxi, somehow got past customs without anything happening, and then just did her thing.
More interestingly, she then navigates Peru with an old paper map - she literally walks around through THE JUNGLE with nothing but that paper map and a few photos, and she not only finds what she is looking for, but the passage of time is so poorly conveyed that it looks as though she did so within a few hours of landing in Peru.
What she was looking for is the tribe of Spiderman people, and the guy who delivered her as her mother was dying shows up and starts talking to her. He then takes her to the special cavern and unlocks her powers to their fullest extent by pushing her into the water. That allows Madame Web to go back into the past beyond her life, to see that her mother was not someone who hated her (as she previously thought) but someone who loved her a lot, because it was discovered that Madame Web, even as a fetus, would have some debilitating genetic disease, and so mother Web started looking for the spiders, because they could heal the child.
With that said, Madame Web goes back home, again, somehow making it through an airport (the same as the previous one), while coming into her country as a person wanted for kidnapping, and has no issues, and gets into her busted up, stolen taxi, and drives around without raising any suspicion.
Meanwhile, Ben’s sister-in-law’s water breaks and the whole crew (Ben and the teenagers) hop on Ben’s car and head for the nearest hospital - at which point a store camera picks up one of the teenagers’ faces and Ezekiel’s accomplice finds her.
Madame Web gets to Ben’s place, but they’re missing. Then, she gets a vision of Ezekiel blowing up Ben’s car with everyone in it, so she goes on to steal an ambulance and ram it through what looks like a billboard/wall, hitting Ezekiel with it and saving Ben and company. She gets the girls in the ambulance, leaving Ben and his sister-in-law, as they are safe from Ezekiel, due to the fact that he wants only the teenagers.
A chase ensues, in which Ezekiel is thwarted by Madame Web using her powers to perfectly see the future and make use of any and all tools at her disposal. The ambulance breaks down, however, but things are okay as she gets a vision once more, and they set off for a nearby firework storage facility.
In it, she follows her visions, using flares as means of blowing up the facility, commanding the girls to duck or dodge just before something happens, and then uses a piece of debris as a shield and perfectly blocks and times incoming projectiles, still going about.
Things momentarily look bad, at which point she uses her power to its fullest extent and winds up in four places at the same time, after which she manages to lead Ezekiel to a place where a sign will fall on top of him and kill him. The way she does so is so incredibly choreographed, as in she literally spends more time looking at the sign that will fall on top of Ezekiel than at Ezekiel as she runs away from him, and he does not notice it at all.
Regardless, Ezekiel gets crushed, falls, gets crushed again, the facility explodes, Madame Web has fireworks hit her eyes and blind her, she falls in the water, and then the girls bring her up and do CPR to save her.
The story concludes with her blind, but so incredibly proficient in using her powers that she is, essentially, not really blind, and also indicates that the three teenagers are going to become various forms of Spidermen(but women).
What are the issues here? Well, for one, the poison. Another issue would be the insanity of how she leaves her country and then comes back, all the while being wanted for kidnapping and assaulting an officer of the law, and then also theft, and then also property damage via slamming a taxi into a diner. Another oddity would be the incredible ease with which she starts using her power which was, up until that moment, debilitating enough to leave her stunned for a few moments after making use of it. Yet another oddity would be the apparent disappearance of Ezekiel’s ability, as he took out the cops in the blink of an eye and moved so fast that the Characters could barely follow him with their peepers, but then the became so incapable at doing anything that it was almost as though he was just a normal, if athletic, guy walking after them.
So many things appeared to just stop being factors, even if they were factors previously. The fact that Madame Web’s visions appeared debilitating at first, and then she became capable of predicting the future so effortlessly that she did not even need to take a moment after looking into it, while driving a vehicle at very high speeds.
There was a pseudo-training arc, there was a moment and a visit to a master from whom to learn how to use that power, but the duration of that visit and learning process was so ambiguous and short, that it felt as though there was no such moment. And so Madame Web develops and becomes proficient at using her powers in three or four days, whereas Ezekiel has had more than a quarter of a century to get good at using his own powers, which is… It is most inexplicable.
But the most troublesome thing in the entirety of the story is the fact that Madame Web, on account of being able to see the future, is far too powerful. Even if she cannot fight, even if she is weaker and slower than her opponent and has no weapon at all, her ability to perfectly see the future and to know exactly how to move, no matter how slowly, makes her invincible - and, indeed, she is invincible in the movie.
This was obvious from the very start of the movie, from the very moment that she started seeing the future - anyone who sees the future and can perfectly negate any action via that precognition is invincible. Thus, when she was poisoned by Ezekiel in the diner, I was thrilled - I thought to myself that she had been so preoccupied with saving the teenagers that she failed to look out for herself, as had happened once already, when she fell off the bridge in the crashed car after saving its driver. I thought to myself that, actually, this might be good, because I imagined that no writer would actually make a Character so obtusely powerful and just leave her be.
There was a very clear opportunity for the poison to mean something - after all, the audience is told that the poison is very powerful and kills the imbiber, the audience is shown the poison killing a recipient, and then the poison is injected into the main Character. If the poison had slowly weakened Madame Web, to the point where she was going to die regardless of what happened, it would have been a very interesting and engaging thing - watching her figure out how to take down Ezekiel so that the teenagers could survive, and ultimately figuring out that she can sacrifice herself to do so, thus inspiring the trio to become superheroes themselves…
Instead, the poison JUST GOES AWAY. She does not do anything, she does not take any medicine - the poison simply goes away. It could be argued that because of the effect of the spider bite, which cured her from her genetic disease just before she was born, has made her resistant to the poison, but that’s just a hypothesis.
Overall? Madame Web’s story started off with promise, but ultimately fell from a cliff and died horribly. The Characters it presented were intriguing and had potential to be entertaining protagonists, especially two of the three teenagers, with one having clear potential for a Character Arc involving the development of self confidence, and the other having such potential for a Character Arc involving the development of humility and compassion, and then there was also the character of Ben (Parker), who was very neat (and I didn’t catch that his surname was Parker throughout the film, so I just thought that this Ben guy was really cool, and then I found out that he was, actually, Peter Parker’s dead uncle). Even Ezekiel had something going for him, but as the movie went on he devolved into something less and less interesting and cohesive, and he was not going to be anything great regardless.
Now, if he had gotten the opportunity to redeem himself? Perhaps that potential Madame Web death by poison thing works out with her trying to sacrifice herself to stop him, only for him to survive, but that somehow changes him and he decides to start doing good things as a means of repenting for his crimes? Then the audience gets a funky spiderman with no web but a funky paralyzing poison…
Alas, this movie’s story was generally bad. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this film get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Unfortunately, the answer will have to be NO. However, that much is very painful, due to the fact that I can clearly see how the answer would have been yes. If only the poison had stayed in play and a self-sacrifice had been implemented on the part of Madame Web, things would have been so much better! Now, however, there is a Character who can see the future perfectly, which Character will take part in sequels, and which Character will be responsible for so many plot-holes and contrivances that I’m, frankly, not at all intrigued by the prospect of going on and watching anything to do with said Character.
Alas, that’s where Hollywood has gotten us. 0/1
Conclusion
4/10. If this movie was only its first half, it would have had a score about two times higher. However, it also features its second half, as a result of which it is a very, very disappointing attempt at cinema that fails to deliver anything, aside from disappointment, second-hand embarrassment for the actors and heavy amounts of cringe.
It has entertaining qualities, as something so bad it’s good, but it barely has anything redeeming about it. I would not recommend it to anyone… Except, maybe, as something to watch with friends, while at least a bit intoxicated.
On the wall of shame I’ll hang this one, for it had great potential to be interesting, and even good, but… Alas.