“Sony’s Spider-Man Universe,” or the “SSU,” as Sony likes to call it, is a strange beast, and its newest entry is no exception.
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” (2014), the sequel to “The Amazing Spider-Man” (2012), starring Andrew Garfield as everyone’s favorite wall-crawler, was a massive failure the likes of which Sony hadn’t prepared for. They originally planned for their “Amazing Spider-Man” franchise to get turned into their own, personal Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the poor critical and audience reception to the same Spidey for the second time lead them to put their dreams on hold. Gone were the visions of “The Amazing Spider-Man 3,” let alone “The Amazing Spider-Man 4” or “The Amazing Spider-Man 5,” but this also means that visions of crossovers and spin-offs were dashed as well. When Marvel re-obtained the rights to Spider-Man, and gave the mask over to Tom Holland, which was incredibly positively received, that meant that Sony’s time with Spider-Man, as a character, was at an end.
Somehow, though, this doesn’t mean that their time with Spider-Man, as a franchise, was at an end.
For reasons that baffle both detractors and defenders alike, Sony is still making movies in a franchise that is missing its main character. “Venom” (2018) was the first. Starring Tom Hardy, even if critics and fanboys weren’t in love with everything that the film had to offer, there was no denying that a film where the main character’s age-old rival wasn’t even directly referenced… made a lot of money. On a budget just under $120M, it managed to rake in $856M. While hardly a contender for “most profitable superhero movie of all time,” it’s a pretty penny for a film that, as Fandango reports, 90% of the audience couldn’t wait to see, on the grounds of a Venom vs. Spider-Man battle that didn’t happen.
Perhaps this just made Sony quit thinking about whether or not their films needed to be well and just decided that, as long as they were made, there was little to worry about. “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (2021) wasn’t considered much better than the first and it still made $507M on a budget of $110M. Then came “Morbius” (2022).
It’s hard to talk about “Morbius” (2022), and, in fact, it deserves its own write-up, but, I’ll keep it short; it’s the kind of movie that kills a franchise where it stands. They couldn’t possibly make any sort of follow-up, sequel, spin-off, ANYTHING after the “Morbin’ Time” incident, right?
Well, they did. “Madame Web” (2024) is really, really bad and it’s not making any money.
At a runtime of almost two hours, I consider it one of the worst trips to the theater that I’ve ever made. It’s been a controversial opinion of mine that “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (2023) was just… not a movie I enjoyed. The reason that I cited as the most egregious thing about the film was that I returned to the theaters a few days later to watch “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” (2023) and couldn’t remember why I had seen all of the trailers playing before the movie so recently. Then I remembered that I had been to the theaters. To see “The Mario Movie.” A week prior.
Well, “Madame Web” (2024) isn’t like that at all… because, in comparison, it was so bad that, since I saw it on February 18th, 2024, not a single day has passed that I haven’t thought about it.
“Superhero Fatigue” is a phrase people have been throwing around for a reason, there’s been too many superhero films releasing too close together, and most of them haven’t been good enough to warrant seeing… But that problem isn’t answered by making superhero movies and then taking all of the superhero stuff out of them.
Throughout “Madame Web” (2024), we are introduced to four female characters; Cassandra Webb, Julia Cornwall, Anya Corazon, and Mattie Franklin. (I had to Google these names, because I certainly couldn’t remember them. I doubt I could’ve remembered them while I was watching it.) These characters are all played by actresses that you could call recognizable. Celeste O’Connor as Mattie is the most obscure of the cast, but still has leading roles in “Freaky” (2020) and “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” (2021). Anya Corazon got to play Dora in that live-action Dora film from 2019, Sydney Sweeney’s already been nominated for Emmys thanks to “Euphoria” (2019-2025), and Madame Web herself is being played by Dakota Johnson herself, the woman who brought the R-rating back to Hollywood with the “Fifty Shades” trilogy, as well as possibly single-handedly destroying Ellen Degeneres’s career.
So, as you might have noticed by the fact that all of these fictional characters had to be called by their legal government names, these superheroes don’t have superhero names. Dakota Johnson’s character of Madame Web is never actually referred to as Madame Web. All of the other characters are supposed to play, apparently, different versions of “Spider-Woman,” but, again, none of them are actively referred to as such.
However, I guess the name doesn’t make the man. Most people who have seen a handful of Marvel films know that Robert Downey Jr.’s iconic character is more commonly referred to as “Tony” than he is “Iron Man.” As long as he’s in the suit, right?
No character in Madame Web ever gets to wear a suit… “in reality.” In Madame Web’s visions of the future, all two of them, there are scenes where all four of the leading ladies get the chance to don their spandex. Not only do they look shoddy at best, with many viewers stating that they looked about on par with the outfits from later seasons of CW’s “The Flash” series, the characters don’t “actually” get to wear them. For all but two scenes in the film, these women are running around in jeans and jackets, attempting to desperately escape… “Ezekiel.”
Again, no supervillain name, but this one does manage to get a supervillain costume. It’s Spider-Man’s costume. Well, more accurately, it’s Miles Morales’s costume. But it looks a lot worse. Like it’s from a CW show.
Ezekiel’s motivation is that he saw a vision of the future, one of the two that I mentioned earlier, where he is killed by these three girls. He then decides that he has to kill them first, and chases after them. Cassandra Webb, who is getting visions of the future, sees that this guy is going to kill these girls in the future, so decides to kidnap them to keep them out of danger. For the rest of the film, they run in circles from the bad guy and, eventually they run into a fireworks factory that blows up and kills Ezekiel.
Genuinely, I wish that I had more to say, a sentiment that seems to be popular right now. The acting isn’t particularly good, to the point that some of the lines are so absurd and so poorly delivered that they brought laughs to the audience I was in theaters with. That’s arguably the best thing about the film; some of the lines are a little wacky. Beyond that, there’s minimal scenes that manage to do anything memorable. Seeing four women run away from a masked stranger might invoke cheesy horror movies from the ‘70s, but “Madame Web” (2024) never aspires to be anywhere near as entertaining.
Fans of the character and comics of Madame Web and Spider-Woman will be let down by their inability to appear in this film. Long-time fans of Marvel and Sony will be let down by the poor quality of the film. Those looking to simply make fun of a film with their friends will be let down by how little there is to say. Only those who truly love the surreal idea of watching a superhero movie, with not just no superheroes, but no action, no intrigue, no theme, and no memorable moments will be entertained. Some have claimed that “Madame Web” (2024) was an attempt to play into the reactions that audiences had to “Morbius” (2022), by making a film intentionally bad in order to gain social media attention. Unfortunately for Sony, if that truly is the case, “Madame Web” (2024), a lot like “Morbius” (2022), is a lot funnier to joke about online, then it is to pay $15 to see it in theaters. (Don’t forget the rising prices of the gas it will take to get to the theaters, as well as the abnormal price of concessions!)
If you have to see what all the hype is about, see what all the hype is about when it hits streaming. If you just want to be in on the joke… you already are, because you get to hear all of this drama again, this August, when “Kraven the Hunter” (2024) releases.
