Critics have referred to Madame Web, the fourth film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, as a “tangled mess.”
The film, starring Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney, has received a string of one-star reviews, both for the plot and the acting.
Based on Marvel Comics, the film follows a paramedic with psychic abilities derived from arachnids.
Last year, the trailer went viral for its “laughably unsure tone”.
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Madame Web: Critics Savage Dakota Johnson’s Spider-Man Spin-Off
In a one-star review, the Guardian’s Benjamin Lee deemed the picture “as dumb and schlocky as the worst of the genre, with lousy network TV effects, uninvolving action, and unfunny and inelegant dialogue”.
Variety’s Peter Debruge criticised the film, claiming it felt “superfluous” in a “world already a little overcrowded with arachnid-related superheroes”.
“The title character has ill-defined powers and nothing particularly interesting to do,” he said.
Madame Web, an elderly blind woman with psychic abilities, appears in Marvel comic books. According to Variety, she supports Spider-Man as a clairvoyant but is merely a “fringe character” in the original story.
Web, played by Johnson, is shown as “an athletic Gen X ambulance driver” on film.
Madame Web: Critics Savage Dakota Johnson’s Spider-Man Spin-Off
Rolling Stone dubbed the latest instalment in the SSU franchise “The Cats of superhero movies,” referring to the widely panned 2019 film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical.
David Fear bluntly wrote that Madame Web is “so much worse” than you had heard, adding: “You look forward to a future in which this film’s end credits are in your rearview mirror and gone from your memory.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Madame Web is yet another film in the category where “every year, studio executives dig up minor characters, dress them in a fog of hype, and leave moviegoers to debate, defend, or discard the finished product”.
Critics were more divided about the acting.
Johnson does her best.
While the Guardian described Johnson as “one of the most ill-fitting tentpole leads I can remember,” IndieWire stated that the leading lady “does her best to save a hilariously retrograde superhero.”
“Johnson is one of the most naturally honest and gifted performers to ever play the lead role in one of these things, and while that allows her to elevate certain moments in this movie way beyond where they have any right to be, it also makes it impossible for her to hide in the moments that lay bare their own miserableness,” wrote David Ehrlich in his review.
Madame Web: Critics Savage Dakota Johnson’s Spider-Man Spin-Off
The film is not the first in Sony’s superhero franchise to earn bad reviews.
The Telegraph dubbed the 2022 feature Morbius, about a living vampire, a “hopeless Marvel venture”.
Many superhero films have failed to get traction since Avengers: Endgame broke box office records in 2019 with $1.2 billion (£980 million) in global ticket sales in its first weekend.
In November, The Marvels grossed only $47 million (£38 million) in its opening weekend, while Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Aquaman, and The Lost Kingdom underperformed at the box office in 2023.
SOURCE – (BBC)
