The new Marvel film Madame Web is now in cinemas, and it’s a failure in many ways. Nevertheless, the blockbuster shows how disturbing it would be if Peter Parker mutated into a killer as Spider-Man
After the ridiculous meme sensation Morbius and the wacky Tom Hardy sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage, the new film from Sony’s smaller Marvel universe, Madame Web, is now in cinemas. However, the film starring Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey) and Sydney Sweeney (Where the Lie Falls) is unlikely to help the superhero franchise get off to a better start.
Madame Web is also a Morbius-like disaster that, despite the Dakota Johnson meme hype, will probably not even reach the cult junk status of the Jared Leto flop. At least there’s one exciting thing about director S.J. Clarkson’s movie, though, and it concerns the villain. If you’ve ever wanted to see just how disturbing Spider-Man would be as a ruthless psycho killer, Madame Web gives you a taste of it.
Director, screenplay, effects: Madame Web is almost a superhero total failure
The film about the Marvel comic character reels off all the origin story clichés that we’ve seen countless times in cinemas over the last 20 years. Madame Web is not only totally outdated and out of date in terms of content, it also looks like it. The CGI effects are almost a cheek and are easily surpassed even by unfinished video game technology demos.
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There is also wooden dialog that the stars have to struggle through with sometimes visible disinterest. In terms of staging, any hint of tempo, movement and action comes across as confusing, shaky or completely disjointed. Only Tahar Rahim (A Prophet) as the villain Ezekiel occasionally lends the Marvel blockbuster an oppressive aura, which is connected to one of the most likeable Marvel superheroes ever.
Madame Web villain becomes Spider-Man in psycho killer mode
The antagonist targets three teenage girls (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor) who kill him in recurring visions as future superheroes. It would be gruesome enough to watch a man try to murder three schoolgirls.
Madame Web becomes even more uncomfortable beyond this standard horror movie story, however, because Ezekiel has Spider-Man-style superpowers after an incident in the Amazon. He does not fire webs from his hands. But just like the friendly spider from the neighborhood, he can crawl up walls and walk upside down along ceilings.
(Ezekiel in a suit in Madame Web)
In Spider-Man 3 by Sam Raimi, there was a passage that briefly hinted at what a loss of control by Peter Parker would look like. Tobey Maguire’s version of the hero is controlled by the alien symbiote Venom in the controversial scenes and transforms into an anarchic daredevil, which many fans at the time derided as more of an emo joke.
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Madame Web takes this approach much further and shows the result if Maguire, Andrew Garfield or Tom Holland were to succumb to psychopathic madness in their Marvel roles and mutate into ruthless killers.
Cassie Webb’s visions of the future in particular, with Ezekiel as a terrifying apparition to whom the three teenagers repeatedly and brutally fall victim, seem like something out of another movie. Madame Web only hints at this. For brief moments, however, this Spider-Man villain in slasher mode lets us glimpse what could have been possible in Sony’s latest Marvel low point
