Madame Web 2024 Dawnload
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Director:S.J. Clarkson
Writers:Matt Sazama,Burk Sharpless,Claire Parker
Stars:Dakota JohnsonSydney SweeneyIsabela Merced
MADAME WEB 2024 Review
Developed back in 2019, given a green light in 2020, filmed during 2022 and then allegedly undergoing reshoots last year, Madame Web was envisioned as a way to extend Marvel and Sony’s Spider-Man universe: a business, if not creative, sense decision after the surprise success of both Venom and Into the Spider-Verse in 2018. An elderly clairvoyant known in the comics for assisting Spider-Man is now turned into a young paramedic, played by Dakota Johnson, who doesn’t even know that Spider-Man exists, in a film desperate to pretend that it’s something it isn’t. Such confusion was on display in the launch of last year’s trailer, immediately going viral for its laughably unsure tone, convoluted plot and checked-out leading lady. Grimly aware of the sea shift, it’s now being referred to as a gritty suspense thriller in press materials with Johnson insisting during press that it’s a standalone movie in its own standalone universe.
The tangled mess that has all created will surely lead to a fascinating oral history years later but for now, with everyone involved fearfully and contractually insisting that the finished product is exactly as intended, all we have is a 110-minute head-scratcher, a baffling string of question marks that remain unanswered. A clumsy opener set in 1970s Peru is our first red flag, junkily directed and shoddily written, setting up our heroine’s absurd backstory which has something to do with spiders as well as spider-people. Thirty years later, she’s a paramedic working alongside Ben Parker (Adam Scott), also known to most as Peter Parker’s uncle, except for in this movie, or at least this version, with all references to Spider-Man scrubbed from the end-product. After a near-death experience she discovers that she can briefly see into the future which allows her to save the lives of three teenagers (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor) being targeted by a madman who also has ties to her past.
With a script written by four people, including its director, SJ Clarkson, a location that’s mostly Boston doubling up as New York, and a lead who looks like she’d really rather be anywhere else, there is something sickly compelling about how disjointed and thoroughly incompetent Madame Web is, less as so-bad-its-fun Midnight Movie and more studio film-making in the 2020s at its very worst case study. The attempt to reposition it as a “suspense thriller” ultimately does the film more harm than good not just because there are absolutely no suspense or thrills here but also because if we were to take it as something more grounded, with no ties to the heightened superheroics of the world it comes from then we would find it even harder to suspend our disbelief throughout.
There is nothing gritty or believable about any of it. The film is as dumb and schlocky as the worst of the genre, with lousy network TV effects, uninvolving action and unfunny and inelegant dialogue, its characters drowning in poorly written exposition (even if the much-memed viral line from the trailer is sadly not in the movie itself). It also contains some of the most egregious examples of product placement I have seen in a long time, the worst of which has Pepsi and Pepsi ads show up at key dramatic moments, including an entire final set piece involving the actual Pepsi-Cola sign in Queens.
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