Review by C.J. Bunce
Despite one technical issue involving dubbing the movie’s villain, Sony delivered a surprisingly good new superhero movie with its Madame Web. As a standalone superhero movie it has a lot going for it, from a new superheroine who will be unfamiliar to most, to a new team of next-generation, spider-themed warriors. Jessica Jones director S.J. Clarkson takes your typical Stan Lee-esque Marvel origin story and put some nice twists on it, tapping several good genre tropes along the way.
The title is sort of a play on the name of the heroine, Cassie Webb, played by Dakota Johnson, a 30-year-old first responder partnered with Parks & Recreation’s always likable Adam Scott as Ben Parker–and before you ask, the movie doesn’t tie Ben Parker to Peter Parker, although that seems like it needs to happen in what comes next. The tale begins in 1973 in the Amazon, where Cassie is still in her mother’s pregnant belly. Her mom is seeking a rare spider for its reputed healing venom. How that ties into the rest of the story is one of the movie’s best features.
But first there is a betrayal in the Amazon, as Cassie’s mom’s associate, Tahar Rahim as Ezekiel Sims, steals the spider once discovered, killing everyone involved to go off and use the spider presumably to make a fortune. Sims shoots Cassie’s mom, but in the true fantasy story tradition of Tarzan and Mowgli, Cassie’s mom is rescued by a tribe of lost people who can climb the forest canopy like spiders. Venom from a spider allows Cassie to be born, but her mother dies. Hey–it’s no stranger than Spider-Man or the Hulk’s origin story.
Unlike the typical Marvel story that must tell you every step along the way, Madame Web skips ahead to 2003, and Cassie is a well-adjusted single woman with a cat and an apartment in New York City. She is more than competent in her job, but a drowning incident on the job sparks a hidden power. She survives thanks to partner Parker, and soon finds she is clairvoyant, seeing brief glimpses of the immediate future. In Tru Calling, Final Destination, Next, and Medium style, she slowly learns to use this power to change the future.
Viewers get caught up with Sims, too–he has been cursed by the Amazonian spider people and is able to foresee future events, including his death, committed by three young women in unique (cool) spider-suits. Marvel’s on-screen villains are always the least interesting of the stories, and Sims is no exception, but that is primarily because his voice is inexplicably dubbed, and dubbed poorly. Clearly Sony spent all the money it had allocated on the film and decided not to redo the dub, which would have been noticed easily by its test audiences. It’s a shame, because this movie is on par with the best half of Sony Marvel’s superhero stories–better than movies like Hulk, The Incredible Hulk, and Morbius, for starters. Lost in the movie is Law & Order’s Jill Hennessy, who could have played the lead role, but instead is relegated to the villain’s arm candy. It’s nice seeing an actress in her mid-fifties cast in such a role, but she is under-used–gone after one scene.
“Everything is related.” It’s a nice hook, when often coincidences can ruin a good story. Who are the spider-women? How did they come together? Cassie ends up on a train with all three of the women in Sims’s dreams just as he is able to put them together to kill them. How? It turns out Sims is a black-suited Spider-Man, similar to the black-suited Spidey from the cover of the 1980s Secret Wars comic book. His scenes in the suit are up there with all we’ve seen in the Venom movies. Some really solid Marvel effects work is in play. Sims uses a “gal in the chair” like Oracle to tap into CCTV and more around town, using top secret NSA facial recognition software to try to keep ahead of the spider-women. The audience knows Sims has sort of inadvertently assembled his three would-be killers on the train–Cassie does not. In fact Sims has no idea Cassie exists. But Cassie perfecting her understanding and use of her visions allows her to piece together that she needs to rescue the women from the train, resulting in one of the movie’s best action sequences.
The only superhero movies to play around with personal relationships and atypical families as handled in Madame Web are the two Shazam! movies. Cassie teaches the teens to use CPR. The three teens have their own backstories, too. Swift editing–which really is a good, rare thing for superhero movies–takes Cassie to Peru to learn more about the spider powers. It’s a fresh story, but also a nice spin on the Sean Connery movie Medicine Man. José Maria Yazpik is the local “medicine man” who educates Cassie on her past. Her powers allow her to look and back and watch why her mother was in the Amazon in the first place.
Dakota Johnson may have delivered her best work yet here. She inhabits the character fully, despite the odd happenings and comic book tropes, and she’s left to convince those around her that she isn’t going crazy. She has a lot to juggle, but pulls it off.
Anya Corazón, Martha Franklin, Julia Cornwall. The movie really gets going once Cassie becomes troop leader to the three young women. How will they get their powers? It doesn’t matter. When? It doesn’t matter. The action plays out much like the final seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Buffy was forced to teach and lead, so must Cassie.
The normal drone of pop music wedged into the movie actually serves the story here. One can imagine before the bombardment of superhero movies that this movie would have fared better at the box office as an enjoyable standalone feature.
This movie is not about Spider-Woman, the female clone of Spidey in the comics. But it might as well be, and it could be the entry point for a new crossover into the Peter Parker, Spiderman-Noir, or Miles Morales spaces within the Marvel Multiverse. The movie does many things better than The New Mutants, the 2020 pre-Disney Marvel movie about a group of young people coming into their new abilities. What’s ahead for Cassie, Anya Corazón, Martha Franklin, and Julia Cornwall? In the end, we’re left with a superheroine like Oracle and Daredevil, but their team has some potential. Unfortunately unfair reviews that didn’t bother giving the movie a chance will probably eclipse any cinema future for these characters. Anya, Martha, and Julia are interesting young characters, played well and with some real chemistry, by Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, and Sydney Sweeney.
But back to Adam Scott’s Ben Parker. As the secondary threads come together it is clear this is, indeed, Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, played later by Cliff Robertson. And keep your ears open for an early reference to a new love interest (Aunt May?). We even get to witness the birth of one (which?) incarnation of Peter.
When you take on the responsibility, great power will come. Madame Web is a refreshing twist on the Spider-Man multiverse mythos. It would make a great double feature with The Marvels. Madame Web is now streaming on Netflix.
