Verdict
Summary
An origin story to an incidental Marvel Comics heroine I’m not familiar with, Madame Web feels very much like a pilot movie for a TV series in the vein of Marvel’s failed Inhumans series, with its less-than-stellar cinematic approach to a should-be-grand introduction to characters we’re supposed to care about. There’s nothing compelling enough here to warrant the effort, and even fans of the comic book character will have exhausted their patience and goodwill towards it.
Plot:
An EMT becomes a superhero and a mentor to three teens who somehow figure into her purpose.
Review:
Before she was born, Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) already had a destiny; her mother, an anthropologist working in the Amazon jungle, was bitten by a rare spider while pregnant, and imbued her unborn daughter with powers that wouldn’t manifest until many, many years later at a very opportune time. Cassandra, trying to balance her life in an already stressful job, begins having vivid premonitions and visions of things that will happen right before they happen, which gives her an edge to begin changing events before they happen if she can keep up with her visions. Meanwhile, there’s a supervillain running around the city, a dark-costumed spider-man of sorts, who is trying to find three young women whom he somehow believes will be the end of him in the future. Cassandra inadvertently intervenes each time the three young women – played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor – are about to be eliminated by the spider-man (played by Tahir Rahim), which throws Cassandra into his radar. With her developing powers, Cassandra becomes both kidnapper and mentor to the three girls – who may end up developing powers of their own – as the four of them learn to trust each other and work together to defeat the villain.
An origin story to an incidental Marvel Comics heroine I’m not familiar with, Madame Web feels very much like a pilot movie for a TV series in the vein of Marvel’s failed Inhumans series, with its less-than-stellar cinematic approach to a should-be-grand introduction to characters we’re supposed to care about. I never for one second found myself invested in any of these characters, and the movie ends up failing to be a proper origin story, but instead is basically what amounts to a prequel to the origin story. The last two or three minutes of the movie desperately tries to wrap it all up and tell the audience, “Okay, this is what you’ve been waiting to see!” but it’s too late for that. Why waste so much time building up to what we wanted to see all along? There’s nothing compelling enough here to warrant the effort, and even fans of the comic book character will have exhausted their patience and goodwill towards it. Filmmaker SJ Clarkson was clearly the wrong director for this, and the material sadly withers under her direction. Even Morbius was better.
Madame Web is out this week on Blu-ray / Digital Code and DVD, and comes with a gag reel, a deleted scene, four bonus features, and Easter eggs.
