Madame Web does not give superhero audiences what they want.
It does not meet the expectations for a good comic book movie, by the classical definition. At no point does the film feel like an A-to-Z origin story for any of its characters. The craft is not here to support a linear, plot-driven script meant to introduce, develop, and embattle a central hero. On multiple levels, it fails to adapt the source material in any way that resembles anything close to its source material. As if to drive the point home, its star -- the titular lead -- is running a press tour that showcases how little she knows (or cares to know) about the franchise.
These are all good things.
Disney has conditioned us, over the past decade, to be content with a certain mode of superhero storytelling. It's a mode that was established by Spider-Man (2002) -- the superhero monkey bars so many are still jumping towards. That film has lost its gossamer glow in recent times for me, as in hindsight, it's a simplistic and reactionary piece of post-9/11 puffery. Yet its rote structure still hangs heavy over each new superhero release, as Peter's "zero to hero" timeline is repeated ad nauseum by several films from multiple studios over two decades. By the time Warner got to Blue Beetle, I started to wonder how many millions were spent on weaving this same translucent web.
These sorts of origin tales only take an issue or two in comics. Well, okay -- nowadays, it takes a crossover, a six-issue limited, a team-up run, and then a solo series to really set a character up. (See: last year's excellent Hawkgirl.) Market demands, you know? But even then, as a weekly comic reader, these things take 5-10 minutes to read circa 2024 -- tops. Older comics were much wordier, but the action-heavy stylistic evolution of the '80s and '90s coupled with the explosion of manga means mainstream comics are simpler to read than ever. No two-dollar words in sight!
So -- I ask you -- why do we want to see that for two hours? It's a question I kept coming back to after The Flash, which is a cape flick that gets it right thanks to Andy Muschietti's deliberate queering and inversion of an "origin story." That picture makes smart use of time dilation and multiple "realities" to simultaneously develop and introduce a character. It's a stroke of cleverness that feels like both an evolution of the Barry from Snyder's League and the origin of a totally new character. Then -- by the end -- even that has been toyed with and challenged in some way by the continuity-smashing climax.
Madame Web, as it turns out, has similar tricks up its sticky sleeves. But where The Flash toyed with timelines and flirted with fractured futures to deliver a sobering story of letting go and moving on, SJ Clarkson's picture uses them to much different effect. Far from a would-be crowdpleaser, her film instead casts its titular (anti)-heroine's clairvoyant web to weave connective tissue to anxiety and depression -- things lead actress Dakota Johnson struggles with publicly. Seeing the future -- all possible outcomes of it -- encumbers and overstimulates her. Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy get all the fun of spider powers with the web-slinging and wall-crawling. Cassie Webb, however, gets a mental illness.
Mental illness is the most useful lens to view Madame Web through. Most of its social situations are direct parallels to scenarios people with trauma and depression have found themselves in. The most cogent one of these is early on, during the baby shower for Mary Parker (Emma Roberts, inexplicably.) During a stiff round of party games, she reveals that her mother died during childbirth when prompted to talk about her. The air goes flat. Everybody gets uncomfortable. Even as Cassie tries to mitigate her pain, the rest of the party looks at her as an outsider.
Then -- her powers flare up. She flashes forward a few moments prior, during a name-guessing game for the baby. Time snaps back, and when prompted, she asks, "didn't we already do this?" It's a line with dual meaning. On the surface, Cassie is referring to the time slip. But on a different level, she's also referring to the party itself -- an impatience with how banal and repetitious this all is to her. It's a situation that anybody with mental illness who's been roped into a social gathering they didn't ask for can relate to. Time seems to skip around a flat circle for a whole evening, as people look at you weird and wonder why you're "like that."
Little moments like these help distinguish Madame Web from the over-busy narrative hyperactivity of the Spider-Verse installments, especially the unfocused 2nd picture. Even without the script telling us, "Cassie feels disoriented and put off by her strange new abilities," it manages to communicate that with honest and relatable social scenarios with easy parallels. In that sense, it's a great capitulation of the spirit of Amazing Fantasy #15, where Peter Parker acted as a cautionary fable for overzealous bookworms who fantasized about beating up their bullies. Even Spider-Man (2002) managed clever double speak for hormonal puberty -- remnants from James Cameron's early draft.
This matters when the lay of the land is plot first, subtext later. One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's biggest weaknesses is in leaving the thematic substance on the cutting room floor. Outside of rare examples -- the tremendous Black Panther and Eternals, for instance -- many of the pictures are squarely focused on exposition and comprehensible, plainly stated messaging. In that sense, they are truer to certain eras of comics than perhaps fans are willing to admit -- you see a lot of that same obvious storytelling in Busiek's Avengers, which had a heavy influence on those early "Phases".
(Can we please stop calling them that?)
Madame Web isn't as much. But when it does stop to try and explain things, it's where the web starts looking a little extra translucent. There are awkward, shoehorned moments where Cassie pries Ben (Adam Scott) about his love life, or where Mary Parker (Emma Roberts) is about to drop the name of her baby only for a balloon pop to spoil the reveal. Presumably meant to be clever continuity weaving, these instead stand out as jarring bits of obviousness. The script grates when it tries to remind us that this is a Spider-Man picture, and that -- yes -- Spider-Man is really here, everybody. I wish S.D. Clarkson and the three other writers had taken cues from Venom and simply not acknowledged the connection, but who knows if Sony would've let them?
Because it's that very connection which actively undermines the film. Intended to land as an analogue for navigating the world as a woman with neurodivergence and trauma, it's stymied by its insistence on the Peter Parker proceedings. We are reminded at the beginning, mid-point, and climax that Peter is a fulcrum on which this world pivots. Cassie doesn't get to matter because Cassie matters; Cassie gets to matter because she saved Peter Parker's life, in service to The Canon. Before she's even given the chance to grapple with her two new disabilities at movie's end, we already know that she's important because she saved Spider-Man.
Well -- that's only half of it. The other half is the saving grace of the film, in the form of three principal leads. Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor are inspired as the three central 'Spider-Women,' and each bring a specific je ne sais quoi to their roles. Sweeney is particularly great as timid, awkward Julia, who embodies a femme riff on pre-spiderbite Petey. It's a markedly different turn from her attempt at a mumbly sexpot in Anyone But You, which didn't particularly work for me. But she's fantastic here, and I wish we'd get her get a feel for the character more in a follow-up. Alas.
That goes triple for Merced and O'Connor. Merced takes on a personal favorite aughts Marvel addition as undocumented teen Anya. Anya is best known for not only the Arana: Heart of the Spider series, but for her turn as Spider-Girl after 'Mayday' Parker. While Merced isn't given any of the tokusatsu-tinged theatrics of her comic counterpart, her character is sufficiently developed and she puts plenty of honest emotional heft into the performance. Meanwhile, O'Connor provides the skeptical wisecrack of the group as Mattie, and has a lot of fun with the role. She brings a sardonic forthrightness to the character that helps define the group as more than passive bystanders.
(Plus -- I'll always like the cool skateboarder girl in any picture like this!)
This trio spins a loom around Madame Web's hemorrhaging heart. They are the emotional core of the film, and why Cassie is forced to challenge her stand-offish, detached attitude towards life. In them, she finds something to fight for and protect in the face of evil they can't yet comprehend. It's the portion of the picture that really works for me. There's a genuine sweetness to their fast friendship, and when the film gives them time to breathe, it sings. A particular highlight is a CPR 101 sequence set in a hotel room, which takes place after Cassie flirts with the possibility of leaving the girls alone. It's a segment of uninterrupted chemistry between the cast, and something the entire enterprise could use a lot more of.
It's worth noting Madame Web is set in 2003, and there are plenty of little period nods. American Idol, era-accurate Pepsi, the works. (From Justin To Kelly is nowhere to be found!) The era is most embodied, however, in that core feminine energy of the picture. Certain sequences evoke Crossroads or Coyote Ugly or Uptown Girls -- those early aughts 'chick flicks' centered around women's solidarity and sisterhood are conjured here. While moments like an impromptu table dance may seem like obvious pandering written by two guys... aughts teens were crazy, y'all. It was a terrible time for America, and that was reflected in the unfettered risk-seeking, careless nature of era teens. Even at the tail-end of the decade, the Iraq War, rise and fall of torture porn, the malaise of celebrity culture -- it took its toll!
So it's in these teens and their mentor that Madame Web finds its legs. They're believable, and by the end of the picture -- even if the off-kilter editing and pacing stymies it somewhat -- you believe in them as a found family.
It's unfortunate, then, that Sony doesn't. That the film's ugly insistence on breaking this family apart to make room for ceaseless exposition that only services brand tie-ins is pretty unforgivable. It's as if nobody involved with the production believes in the characters, and we're left to pick up the pieces of their hope -- assemble it into something meaningful. And admittedly, some of the ways Madame Web subverts the superhero formula by assembling those disparate pieces into something surreal, dreamic at times. Time moves backwards and forwards at once, a free-fall temporal dissociation that keeps the viewer puzzled and somewhat in the dark. This is a strength of the film, but unfortunately, it's a beautiful spider-web that -- upon closer inspection -- is a crack woven by a hole too large to ignore.
That is the tragedy of Madame Web. There's a great picture in here, somewhere. Sequences like a diner fight set to "Toxic" flirt with campy, transcendent greatness. But unlike something like Birds of Prey -- a film now receiving repertory screenings, which is delightful -- this picture doesn't let its own characters exist outside the definition and safety of their brand. There's no risk, no transgression, outside of the stylistic and tonal choices. When one watches this movie devoid of context, there are fragments that remain of a better picture.
But years down the line, in the larger context of the SSU (thanks, I hate it) and as its own picture, there will be very little here to recommend. If you want a mental health analogue, there are about a dozen better pictures I could give you that say and do more. If you want early aughts feminine bonding, just watch one of the 'chick flicks' this so hollowly evokes. Whatever "camp" is being claimed to this is a reach, and just demonstrates -- to me -- how far our standards for camp have fallen. The only campy thing here is the central villain's obnoxious, scenery-chewing performance that yanks you out of every single scene. Watching this man seduce and kill Jill Hennessy is the most unbelievable sequences of 2024, and we are only three months in. He is rather obviously an attempt to recreate Ewan McGregor's Black Mask, and he absolutely did not do the assignment.
(In fact, one could argue that Madame Web's entire narrative -- central female figure protects young girl from predatory man in a black suit -- is a gussied-down, hacked-apart, misinterpreted and misguided retread of Birds of Prey. Of course, I'd never be that superficial or petty in my criticism! But one could argue that. If they wanted to.)
In ten years, when somebody is walking a newcomer through the Sony Spider-Man pictures, this will inevitably come up. And when pressed with why it's important, to the plot, to the story, there will only be one answer. "It's about these girls that saved Spider-Man when he was a baby. There was supposed to be a whole series with them, but it got canned because the box office was so bad." And it's shame that -- on its own merits -- Madame Web simply does not offer enough to stand up to that reductive assessment.
Madame Web is currently in theaters. Episode music by Diego Nava.
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