A decade removed from The Amazing Spiderman 2, Sony proves it hasn’t learned anything about what makes the wall-crawler and his mythos so beloved. Trying to launch another live-action spider-verse, after the failed Andrew Garfield duology and fan-mocked massacre of Morbius, it falls upon the shoulders of Madame Web to attract an audience suffering from superhero film fatigue. It fails.
Madame Web follows New York paramedic Cassie Webb, played by Dakota Johnson, who becomes clairvoyant following a near-death experience and must save the lives of three teenage girls, played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor, that are being hunted by Ezekiel Sims, the spider-powered murderer of Cassie’s mother, played by Tahar Rahim. The film is essentially a cat-and-mouse story and ever since the trailer, comparisons to The Terminator – perhaps the greatest of these stories – have been made. If you were to take Arnold’s greatest role, remove all tension and threat from the unstoppable killing machine, reduce the beloved characters to detestable single-trait personalities, speed through the plot like a teenager reading the CliffNotes on Shakespeare and chuck in Britney Spears’ Toxic, you would have the script for Madame Web. However, in all likelihood, your muddled first-draft will be leagues better than what was released in cinemas.
The performances of the main cast are fine. Dakota Johnson may be placed as top contender for the Razzie Awards come 2025, but her performance is giving as much effort as the rest of the film and doesn’t distract. Sweeney and O’Connor are the closest anyone comes to good acting, and while Rahim tries to elevate an utterly one-dimensional character, there is no way for anyone to overcome the unoriginal and thin dialogue that pervades throughout. The amount of ADR – Automated Dialogue Replacement – in this film is sickening, but it is made worse by its amateurish integration; the dubbing of Bruce Lee films matches up more accurately. Apart from being immensely distracting, it gives the feeling that the film is at times held together by sellotape and prayer, though God has long since abandoned this abomination.
If there is one positive thing about this film, it rests solely in the performance of Adam Scott as Ben Parker. With an easy yet earnest charisma, Scott shows us a glimpse at the man who will become the cannon event of the original Spider-Man, and while he cannot match Cliff Robertson’s performance from the Raimi trilogy, his Ben Parker is one we would all love as an uncle. Should a story ever be told about raising his nephew and dealing with the family tragedy, he would certainly be a strong lead to tell it. Madame Web is a completely soulless film which joins the latest pile of superhero schlock that has been pedalled out in recent years. It is far from the worst of this bunch, but it is the most blatantly lazy. Clairvoyant or not, one prediction is true; this franchise does not have a future.
1/5
Image/Video Credit: TMDB/ Sony Pictures