1 of 6 | Dakota Johnson - Mrs. Web. Image courtesy of Sony Pictures
LOS ANGELES, Feb. Sept. 13 (UPI) -- "Madame Web," which opens in theaters Wednesday, is bad in a way that even flops like "Catwoman " and "Batman & Robin" aren't. These films contain absurdly flawed explorations of the powers of cats and bats, but Madame Web does her best to explain her premise.
In 2003, Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic who avoids interacting with patients or her partner Ben (Adam Scott). But after a near-death experience, Cassie begins to see glimpses of the future.
His adversary, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), can see the future, specifically the three women who killed him. Their paths cross when Cassie saves Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabella Merced), and Mattie Franklin (Celesta O'Connor) before the Sims can reach them.
Seeing the future is a great superpower, but the movies have made the concept even more interesting. Nicolas Cage played a psychic who was able to see two minutes of progress in The Following , but that was the end of the movie Destination .
For Cassie, the psychic visions are just a plot. The viewer witnesses the violence as Cassie sees it, in order to act differently and avoid danger.
But Madame Web was lost long before Cassie got her powers. The exposition, which reveals the film's mythology and its connection to Spider-Man, appears as temporary dialogue in an early draft that was never revised.
The film begins with Cassie's mother, Constance (Carrie Bichet), exploring the Peruvian Amazon in 1973 while pregnant. Simms was her assistant who betrayed her and managed to gain spider powers that she uses for evil, but the Peruvian spiders saved Constance's baby.
Comic books and comic book movies indulge in a lot of contrived technobabble, like the radioactive spider that originally gave Peter Parker his powers. The joy of films like Spider-Man , Iron Man , or Sam Raimi 's Captain America is the honesty with which they are performed.
From the moment Simms asks Constance what kind of spiders she's looking for, it seems like a conversation no one can have, much less two partners. They literally give the audience the information they need for the story, but begrudgingly.
Even as a supervillain, Sims speaks in strange phrases that don't even fit in the bubble of a comic book. "It's not a dream," Sims says of his night vision. One day they will kill me.'
Someone living with this nighttime prophecy will likely find a more organic way to break the news. He later said: "Every day my encounter with death is closer."
Maybe if Sims stops laughing so much, the superheroes in his vision won't have a reason to kill him. Sims also keeps repeating his vague story of how he came out of nowhere, but it's not important to elaborate.
The Sims' personal hacker, Amaria (Zosia Mamet), hacks into the NSA and becomes fascinated with its surveillance for the first time in 2003. Instead of commenting on the development of the follow-up, we feel like the TikToker just summarized Wikipedia. entrance.
To show how motivated Constance is, she says that the boy's kicks try to prevent her from working, but this does not deter her. Not only is this a creepy line, but it's also a ploy to reveal Constance's true motives later in the film.
Cassie tries to be funny, not understanding what's going on, from her own powers to the Sims to the three girls' relationship with him. It's hard to find funny when he's right, to the point where 30-year-old Constance has to explain Cassie's plot right on the tapes.
The premise of a lonely girl who discovers that she really loves the family she chose is an important element of the story. However, Cassie is only friends with the three girls because of the plot, not because of their relationship.
Cassie wants to stop the Sims from killing them and teach them CPR, but they never get to meet each other. Each of the three girls has a different story that separates her from her parents, but they tell these stories as an additional explanation rather than an emotional need.
There is not much to offer in the entire environment either. There are little spiders running around, mostly Sims.
It's basically Cassie and three girls on the run from The Sims, but it's a mediocre version of a chase movie. As an ambulance driver, Cassie has some useful moves, but they're not fast or bad.
It takes the entire movie to reveal Cassie's true superpower, beyond her vision. Imagine if Superman didn't fly until the final scene, or if Spider-Man didn't catch the web until the end.
Discovering your powers is usually the best part of any superhero movie. They still have half the way to go.
Madame Web is desperate to bond with Spider-Man. The film features two characters from Spider-Man history and other references.
Madame Web , on the other hand, offers more localization work than just sitting in front of screens. They filmed in New York, some action scenes in Boston and additional shots in Los Angeles and Mexico that were going to be dubbed for Pirro.
Unfortunately, Madame Web does not film interesting scenes in front of these places.
At least Catwoman, Batman and Robin believed in what they did. They were wrong, but Madame Web seems like a minimalist parody of what could be considered comics.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes columnist since 2001, a member of the Society of Television Critics since 2012, and a member of the Critics' Choice Society since 2023. Learn more about his work in the entertainment industry.
