"Madame Web" a visual war crime

Josh
Aug 11, 2024
8 min read

Updated: May 17, 2025

Dir. SJ. Clarkson (2024)

I would rather die in the Amazon while researching spiders than watch this again

The first note I took of this movie was simply, “Jesus Christ”. Madame Web has to be not just one of the worst superhero movies in recent memory (please note I have not seen Morbius), but one of the worst big budget contemporary films I’ve seen, competing for first place against Jurrasic world dominion. So if you’re wondering how a movie like this could fail so massively, like a lot of these big budget money burners, we were plagued with rewrites and reshoots. From what I could find, Dakota Johnson expressed to The Wrap, “There were drastic changes… And I can’t even tell you what they were.” Furthermore, Hollywood Journalist, Jeff Sneider reported that the film was originally shot in the setting of the 1990’s because they wanted it to be set in the same world as Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man. Although, studio heads made the choice to instead indoctrinate Tom Holland into Sony’s failure of a universe but in doing this meant that the timelines would no longer sync up. So reshoots took place to then remove all of the 90s references and instead set the movie in 2003 where we only get minor references to Blockbuster (almost a cliché seeing a blockbuster reference as nostalgia bait) Britney Spears’s Toxic and a really fourth wall breaking reference by ensuring the CGI looked like it belonged within the era as well. Other than that, numerous times throughout the movie I had to keep reminding myself that this was set in the past as the setting really didn’t change anything.

I know I’m late to the party with dunking on Madame Web. Before the film had even hit cinema’s it was getting roasted online focusing on its outdated look and tone with everyone memeing on the line ‘My mother was in the Amazon researching spiders, right before she died.” Which, FYI, if you hoped to watch this movie in order to clap and cheer under numerous layers of iron when this line came up…it doesn’t. The cowards removed the line. Fuck you, Sony. Release the ‘Amazon Cut’. But even after not paying much attention to the reviews because I knew it was going to suck, come on it’s a Sony picture, it did not prepare me for what I witnessed. This movie is genuinely terrible across every aspect of the art of filmmaking.

I’ll be real with you all, I don’t even want to go into the effort in explaining the plot because I don’t think anyone on the production team really cares about telling a story. The titular Madame Web a.k.a Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic who after an accident in the line of duty, is revealed to have clairvoyant powers that were given to her by Amazonian tribe of Spider-People while she was still in her Mother’s (Kerry Bishe) womb who was researching spiders right before she died. Her mother killer and perceived bodyguard Ezekial Sims (Tahar Rahim) stole the spider she was searching for and is now haunted with visions about getting murdered by three different Spider-Women (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor). And he makes it his goal to track them down and kill them before they turn into the heroes.

After an accidental run in with each girl, Webb finally meets up with the three girls and saves them from a run in with Sims after having a vision of the girls getting murdered. And this is the bulk of the movie, Webb and her surrogate family on the run from Sims and trying to keep a low profile across regions of New York (I think they’re regions of New York, I’m Aussie so don’t @ me) ending with a fight on top of a fireworks factory lit by the Devil red glow of a giant neon Pepsi sign. And no that is not a joke.

So I know I went over that pretty quickly, and I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seat wanting to know every single detail of the movie, but the story was severely damaged by its abysmal writing and editing.

Starting with editing, this movie has some of the worst editing I’ve seen in recent memory for a big budget movie. The film has a massive fundamental issue with the overall pacing. At the 30 minute mark I thought I had been watching for over an hour. At 1 hour and 14 minutes I thought the movie had been watching for 2 hours. I know this a film about seeing the future and different outcomes but there is a lot of fluffing around and repeating scenes at the start which really dragged out the movie. The film tries to make their action scenes more exciting by adding in post fake camera zooms and camera shake, similar to style to Man of Steel and Batman v Superman from the Snyder films. It's absolutely abhorrent to watch as the camera snaps in and out without any motivation making it very irritating to watch. But if you’re not annoyed by the fake documentary style cinematography, then you’ll be motion sick by the action as the camera flips around following characters as they run along the walls and ceilings. During the scene where Sims fights the Spider-Women, it’s almost impossible to know what's going on as the camera follows characters on the roof spinning upside down and while the shot quickly cuts from one spot to the other on top it’s set in a dark space as well.

At the start of the film we are introduced to Cassandra and (Soon to be Uncle) Ben Parker (Adam Scott) speeding through the streets of New York saving someone's life in an ambulance. Although, I had no idea where the ambulance was going as it was cut with it driving from left of the screen to the right, and then to the left to the right so in my mind it looked like they were lost as they went back the way they came. And it's not just at the action where the cuts fail this film, during a dream or vision conversation with Sims the film was constantly cutting from angle to angle, swapping out characters positions and costumes while a gross outdated looking filter flashed in and out of the film making it really hard to keep track of the (what I’m sure was riveting) dialogue between our hero and villain.

So being a Sony film and with the writers behind such hit films as Morbius, Power Rangers and Gods of Egypt, I’m sure there's no surprise to anyone that the writing is miserable. Every line is so on the nose and uninspired that you spend most of your time mouthing off the next cliched line before it’s been said, getting smacked in the face with extremely obvious set-ups or rolling your eyes so far in the back of your head as you hear lines that would fail a screen writing course in University.

During the previously mentioned ambulance scene, Ben and Cassy are having some ‘banter’ back and forth while someone dies in the back of their vehicle, with dialogue so on the nose it was practically screaming ‘This is Character development everyone! Here is their history!’ With such amazing lines line “This makes me miss the Army but less getting shot at” and “I miss living in Queens” and “You know we don’t do family stuff, I’m a foster kid.” And for even though she’s a paramedic who works with saving and communicating with people everyday of her life, she’s an absolute asshole to people. As we have to endure this awkward scene where a child of a family she helped wants to give her a drawing he made (why he made a drawing of their family, I don’t know. It didn’t even have her in it) she was standing there like a dunce trying to avoid the situation. Do you get it? She doesn’t like kids. And to compliment her attitude towards children, the chemistry between her and the three teens is a failed experiment. Her and Ben had a mild spark but when he had to have dialogue between these girls every bit of banter felt flat. Even between the teens they talk as you would expect them to due to being written by out of touch adults so they don’t really jell with each other. Instead spending their time together complaining about their situation and acting confused all the time. Even by the end of the movie when you would expect them to be best of friends after seeing how well they work together in the future, they almost have nothing to do with each other, they don’t work together in any way. And last little bit on dialogue, not really the writing but the ADR in this was terrible, especially on the Villain. There were moments in this film where he would ‘say’ lines that were on the forefront of the audio track but his mouth was barely moving.

I’ve rambled for ages but I really don’t wanna talk about this much longer. Although, the last bit I wanted to touch on is the final fight scene. Having the final fight take place not only next to a giant Pepsi sign but actually have the Pepsi sign play a part in the action. And the Pepsi was even set up like Chekhov’s gun. You see Cassy holding a can at the start of the film, they appear again mid way through to remind you about the band and then it makes the final appearance to save the day at the end. I was shocked. This goes beyond bad product placement, this is a distracting and pathetic method to shoehorn in Pepsi. It has zero self awareness and is a spit in the face of the audience but also film-making. Also, I may have missed this because to be honest I got up and made myself a tea while this was all happening, but they went to the fireworks factory as it was teased at the start of being unsound and a death trap (who saw this coming). And Cassy makes the dumb decision to bring the girls there but instead of just running out of the building, she takes them on the roof… on a structurally unsound building they’re trying to collapse. And then this falls into my issues with Pepsi, why was there a massive Pepsi sign on the building? It wasn’t like a billboard, it was a neon beacon I would expect to see on a Pepsi factory or building, not for simple advertising especially back then. This film is a visual war-crime.

I hate this movie. I regret watching it as soon as it was done. I honestly feel bad for the crew involved who originally set out to make a real movie but I truly hate the higher-ups in charge of making non-sense choices sabotaging their own product. S.J Clarkson didn’t set out to make a bad movie based on the behind the scenes, she was set up to fail from the system since the beginning. No one on this planet cared about a Madame Web movie, in fact I’m almost certain 99% of the world didn’t even know who she was. And I can guarantee 99% of the audience of this movie will forget about it as soon as they’ve seen it. But as I forget the plot of the movie, I won’t forget the dread I felt while watching. I won’t forget Sony’s continued pathetic and desperate attempt to chase trends in order to turn a quick buck.