The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D
When most people saw the trailer for Madame Web, they collectively asked the same question: What the fuck is this? That includes star actress Dakota Johnson, who quit her talent agency when the trailer was released. Having now seen the film, I can’t answer that question, but I can add several more questions: What’s the point of this? What’s happening? How does this fit into continuity? Who are these people? What a tangled web we weave when so many questions I do conceive. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Madame Web is a frigging disaster that somehow makes the plot of The Marvels seems substantive in comparison. And that, dear readers, is quite an accomplishment.
We open with a prologue set in 1973 in the jungles of Peru, where a team of scientists are looking for a species of spiders that is supposed to have healing powers. The team is led by pregnant Constance Webb and Ezekiel Sims, but Ezekiel betrays Constance when they find the spiders, shoots her, and takes one of the spiders for himself. There is a tribe of Spider-Men nearby (?) who try to save her with the spider, but she dies giving birth to her daughter, Cassandra.
Flash forward to 2003 (these dates will be important later) and Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is now an adult working as a paramedic in New York City with her co-worker Ben Parker (played by Adam Scott from Hellraiser: Bloodline). Yes, I said Ben Parker, as in Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben. Remember him being a paramedic? Because I sure as fuck don’t. Anyway, she crashes the ambulance in the water and the near-death experience awakens powers in her that have apparently been laying dormant for 30 years for some reason. She can now see into the immediate future and maybe sometimes be telepathic or something (??). She has a vision of three teenaged girls being murdered by an evil Spider-Man (who is actually Ezekiel), so she decides to track down the girls and protect them. Meanwhile, Ezekiel has been having reoccurring nightmares about those three girls ultimately becoming Spider-Women (???) and killing him, which is why he wants to kill them first.
Even when considered as a stand-alone story, this movie makes no goddamn sense. What the fuck does this villain even do? The movie never portrays him as a crime boss or anything, so I guess he’s just a rich guy whose entire life revolves around this spider for some reason? If he’s afraid that he will ultimately be killed by superheroes, why not just avoid doing anything that would cause them to want to kill you? Or, even easier, just fucking leave New York. Or, since you know who Cassandra is and that their evolution into Spider-Women will hinge on her involvement, just kill Cassandra. Or just don’t go after them in the first place so you don’t set these events in motion. There are a hundred ways to resolve this problem and the other 99 are smarter than the choices made in the movie.
Fortunately for Ezekiel, Cassandra is just as bad at protecting people as he is at not getting killed. For starters, she’s mistakenly identified as the person trying to kill the girls even though the initial attack happens on a subway with many witnesses. She could have just brought them to a police station and explained things; I don’t think the cops would misidentify her as the obviously male attacker that beat the shit out of several officers. But, no, she doesn’t do that. She does the next most obvious thing: She drives them into the middle of the woods, tells them to stay put and fucks off to look for her mom’s journal for three hours. The Terminator would have been a damn short movie if Kyle Reese had instincts like this. This establishes the pattern for the rest of the movie: Cassandra takes the girls somewhere, temporarily abandons them for no reason, the villain attacks and then Cassandra shows up and hits him with a car. Sometimes she leaves them and goes to her apartment. Sometimes she leaves them and goes to the Peruvian jungle, which is apparently a ten-minute drive from Queens. She’s also very adept at driving vehicles through buildings, including one sequence where she somehow drives an ambulance through a window on like the fourth floor of a building. How the fuck did she get it up there?
In the context of the Marvel Universe and Spider-Man continuity, this makes even less sense. If this is taking place in 2003, then where the fuck are these characters when the other Marvel movies are happening? Shouldn’t these Spider-Women be around 40 when Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man? Wouldn’t that factor into anything? Why didn’t Cassandra have a premonition of Ben being killed and do something about it? Why is New York surprised by the existence of Spider-Man if they have had three Spider-Women for two decades? Most importantly, did the studio really not have a meeting about this before greenlighting this movie?
Would you like a Pepsi? I’m more of a Coke guy myself, but fuck did I want a Pepsi after watching this movie. Whenever someone is having a drink, it is always a Pepsi and they are very careful to hold it with the logo facing the camera at all times. Cassandra attends a baby shower (for the imminent birth of Peter Parker, no less) and holds a Pepsi the entire time, carefully positioning her hand so that the logo isn’t obstructed. She never even drinks the fucking thing, so I guess she’s like Doc Brown with a shot of whisky; she just likes to hold it. The climax takes place on the roof of a fireworks factory against the backdrop of a massive Pepsi sign. Why the fuck is there a huge Pepsi sign on the roof of a fireworks factory? I DON’T KNOW!!
Dakota Johnson’s performance has already become notorious for the complete lack of fucks that she is giving in this movie. She delivers critical dialogue with the passion and intensity of someone ordering a sandwich at a deli. But, honestly, nobody here has anything to work with and they all seem to know it. The villain is so bland that I’m still not entirely sure why he’s the villain. The three teenagers all just kind of sit around and bicker until it’s time for them to do something stupid and get attacked for the tenth time. Current it-girl Sydney Sweeney is one of them, even though the film’s marketing amazingly doesn’t mention her, and she is supposed to be playing the dorky girl. Yes, Sydney fucking Sweeney in a schoolgirl outfit for two hours, but she’s the lame one because she’s wearing glasses. Glasses!! What a fucking loser! Seriously, that’s just good casting. Oh, and if you want to see them all in their superhero suits and kicking ass, you’re shit out of luck because that only happens for about five seconds and it’s only in the brief premonition sequences. The name “Madame Web” is never even said in the movie, for Christ’s sake.
I can’t even say that I’m mad at this movie. I had a few good laughs at its expense and I got to look at Dakota Johnson for two hours, so I will say that it is more of an enjoyable trainwreck rather than a burning dumpster fire like Morbius and the Venom movies. There is even a kernel of a good idea here, as the concept of someone with short-term premonitions trying to protect someone from their future killer would make for a great thriller. It seems like a book that Dean Koontz would have written in the 80s. But while watching this movie, in my head I just kept hearing Pee Wee Herman yelling “Why? What’s the significance? I DON’T KNOW!” Me either, Pee Wee. Me either.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Web_(film)#/media/File:Madame_Web_(film)_poster.jpg
