Caught in a Web
So many thoughts…
Madame Web
Director: SJ Clarkson • Writers: Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Claire Parker, SJ Clarkson
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, Isabela Merced, Tahar Rahim, Emma Roberts, Adam Scott, Zosia Mamet
USA • 1hr 59mins
Opens Hong Kong February 14 • IIA
Grade: B-
Let me make this crystal fucking clear. Madame Web is not a good movie, there’s no disputing that. Star Dakota Johnson looks actively bored, it suffers the same rushed CGI work that so many big noisy actioners do these days, as well as goofy “WTF?” moments that rip you out of the story.
But it is not the dumpster fire you’ve probably heard it is.
The vitriol that has been hurled at Madame Web since the reviews started landing is over-reactive. It is not the worst “Marvel” movie ever. It is not the worst superhero movie ever. It is objectively not worse than Morbius. What it is, is toplined by four women, and directed by a woman. So this is the same horse shit that every superhero or action movie that dares acknowledge the existence of 51% of the world has had to endure since pissed off, entitled fan boys – yes, boys – decided what they want is all that counts, what they like is all that counts, and that their dwindling influence is a moral imperative that must be addressed. And no. That’s not an overreaction. “Women have the same freedoms as men” is a fucking joke, and women do not get to fail in the superhero/genre movie (or any) space the way men do. The machine gave Armie Hammer chance (The Lone Ranger) after chance (The Man From UNCLE) after chance (Mine) to happen and only gave up when he was accused of beating and eating his girlfriends. Karyn Kusama’s single big budget trash heap (Aeon Flux) wasn’t even finished by her but she was banned to indies immediately. Patty Jenkins directed “hot chick” Charlize Theron to an Oscar and she still had to wait 14 years for Wonder Woman. Josh Trank made one cult film and was handed US$150 million for Fantastic Four in three. Glad that worked out. Let’s just skip over Ghostbusters, and the current lovefest around the Deadpool 3 trailer – which does exactly what She Hulk did but got shit on for. If you think I’m being “over-sensitive” sit the fuck down. I don’t care.
That look says “This again?”
Long story short, the CW-feeling Madame Web is yet another origin story from Sony’s loosely related (failing) Spider-verse, this one telling us how Manhattan paramedic Cassandra Webb (Johnson, still trying to live down 50 Shades) comes to develop the power to see the future – and change it. It has to do with her pregnant mother being left for dead by her shady AF jungle guide Ezekiel Sims (the heavily ADRed Tahar Rahim, Napoleon), then being exposed to a Peruvian super-spider’s venom before dying in a Star Trek cave during childbirth. Which is also the source of the film’s best joke. After nearly drowning in the East River, she comes back clairvoyant, not something Cassie can control, but something that comes in handy when Ezekiel gets it in his head that “teenagers” Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney, Anyone But You), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced, Dora and the Lost City of Gold) and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) are going to kill him some day. Against her introverted, slightly misanthropic judgement, Cassie becomes the variously wounded girls’ protector, saviour and ultimately guardian.
So many questions come from within this mysterious web. Why exactly does Ezekiel want this spider? What is this “everything I’ve built” he’s so bent on preserving? How does Cassie boost a NYC cab, take off the plates, and not get picked by New York’s finest? And how does Cassie get to Peru (and back) in seven days? One does not simply walk into the Peruvian Amazon. The illogic of films like this is truly irrelevant, because every single one of them is guilty of it, so let’s just set that aside. Television (Succession, Dexter, EastEnders) director SJ Clarkson and co-writers Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless and Claire Parker have a good story buried somewhere in there, beneath the constantly moving camera (I felt discombobulated for the wrong reasons) and Symbolism 101 images; Cassie spends a lot of time gazing through cracked windshields and gauzy curtains that look kind of like… checks notes… spider webs. Dun, dun, dun! Madame Web would also benefit greatly from better action and a better villain, with clearer motivations and more nefariousness to him. And you get one near-death by drowning per film. One!
But there’s a welcome low-stakes edge to Madame Web, a movie that’s essentially about mothers and daughters and the simultaneously nurturing and resentful relationship between the two. I know right? So much vagina talk. Gross! Let’s stick with daddy issues (Iron Man, Thor, Black Panther, Spider-Man, Luke Skywalker, Bruce Wayne, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings… I’ll stop now). The fate of the world, or our known universe, is not at stake here for a change. There is no laser beam to the sky, though death by Pepsi is something to behold. It’s more guilty of being average than bad. All this would be considerably worse without Johnson’s effortless Santa Monica “over it” eye rolls – even though it’s hard to tell if she’s Cassie, or Dakota reading Cassie’s dialogue – and the fleeting charm Sweeney, Merced and O’Connor manage to flash when Clarkson calms down and plays her game for a minute. Sure, this should be a rated a C, but you know what? Anyone can review bomb to make a point. — DEK