Breaking My Silence on 'Madame Web'

There’s one Madame Web line reading that is well worth the price of admission.

Dakota Johnson in Madame Web. Photo: Screenshot.

A generous reading of Madame Webb is that it’s an overcorrection. If you’re complaining of superhero fatigue, fine, here’s a movie where there are barely superheroes, and their super powers are slight. Madame Webb is a thrill-less thriller; there is no real mystery. 

Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a New York City paramedic with a dry sense of humor. After a near-death experience, she realizes she can see about 12 seconds into the future, a superpower that is not that helpful. She’s stalked by Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), a villain with super-strength who can see a little bit more into a future that’s not fixed. That’s where Madame Webb’s problems begin: neither of these powers seem like particularly good deals.

Teenage boys can scale buildings and defeat tentacled super-scientists, an intergalactic bad guy can fret over losing some jewels, Gwyneth Paltrow can be there, but no one responsible for the Marvel Cinematic Universe could see Madame Web’s gaping hole? This is an origin story of an origin story: Madame Web introduces Cassie, who is the reluctant primary guardian of a cadre of teenage spider girls (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor). But the movie only teases the powers of that trio in broad, random ways. They will be strong, and quick, and maybe spin webs … one day. After two hours and half a small bag of popcorn, I’m to believe that these girls’ powers … will arrive sometime in the near future? Until then, they’re about as powerful as the bronze girl statue on Wall Street, and certainly just as clunky.

Dakota Johnson holds the whole movie together with a performance that is funnily postmodern. Cassie is a non-character; Johnson plays her as deadpan and lightly hostile. The script doesn’t fill out in any detail why Cassie is a paramedic, or what she’d rather be doing with the four days over which this movie takes place, so why should Johnson? Cassie just doesn’t feel like hanging out with a bunch of teenagers, and that rises a standard of acceptable character motivation for me, someone who does not like running errands around the time teens get out of school. It’s preferable, after all, to Scarlett Johannsson or Robert Downey Jr. pretending these are real characters with real stakes. 

Cassie doesn’t like the three girls, who don’t know each other but are all orphaned in different ways, but she’s stuck with them. Cassie is the only adult who can see that they’re being tracked by Ezekiel, who also orphaned her, killing mom when she was researching spiders in the Amazon. Is there a more elegant way to say that? Probably. The movie doesn’t care so why should I?

Anyway.