Let’s be honest here, most people had made up their minds on this film before ever going to see it hadn’t they? It’s okay to admit it, best being honest with these things. In fact any film that falls under the Sony’s Spider-Man Universe franchise – with the exception of the Venom films (Tom Hardy is bulletproof) – is likely to find itself fired upon by the web shooters of, well, the world wide web! But for those brave few who dared venture into the cinema, is this “the worst comic book movie ever” or “one of the most ramshackle films ever released”?
Well, in a word, that treats those very real hyperbolic statements with the dismissiveness they deserve…Nah.
Madame Web, adapted from the Marvel Comics Spider-Verse character, sees New York City paramedic Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) undergo a near fatal experience, that seems to unlock abilities within her that she never realised she had. Abilities gifted to her at birth. Abilities that allow her to see fragments of the future, and when she sees three teenage girls attacked by a brutal masked man, she must act to save them. Not realising, just how connected all these people really are to her. Including this vicious attacker.
So…Madame Web is in so many numerous ways a bit of a tangled messy web indeed (certain lines of dialogue, the odd wooden performance, some logical leaps) and thus will do nothing to dispel all the talk of superhero fatigue and the genre’s nosedive in quality perceptions. But, call it the pre-release overblown anti-hype that Twitter, sorry X (sigh), have relished basking in, but this writer ended up really enjoying the experience.
S.J. Clarkson’s film just had something about it that won us over and is nowhere near the blight on comic book cinema it is being made out to be. Be it the well-worn (so to speak) costumed superhero stuff taking more of a backseat to a rather rollicking slasher-inspired Final Destination-esque horror thriller with some campy detours, or some entertaining characters that you are quite happy to spend time with, the whole mad little experience is endearing rather than tiring.
Madame Web is a bonkers movie that is as imperfect as it gets, from its tangled lore down to its wacky creative and filming decisions but it is also infinitely more interesting than other assembly line super capers for this very reason, and is largely its own thing rather than a tick box venture in universe building. All in all, it is a good night out, with a pigeon-saving, people-avoiding, new kind of hero and a finale that plays out like Highlander’s final set piece had it been sponsored by Pepsi!
Chalk Madame Web up as one of those so called “disasters” that a select few (*raises hand) will gladly go back to and enjoy every time (Jonah Hex, Spawn, Howard The Duck) rather than an empty husk of a movie that you forget about as soon as you leave the cinema (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) or truly a title deserving of worst comic book film ever (Fant4stic).
Maybe we are going slightly mad (it finally happened…), but we can foresee a certain crowd embracing this fun flick down the line. This Madame caught us in her web clearly!
Madame Web is in Cinemas Now!
