Madame Web is a Comedy

By Amir Muhammad | June 5, 2024

Sony has never been the best at creating their own Spider-Man universe and their new movie “Madame Web” continues to prove that point. To put it plainly, “Madame Web” is absolutely terrible.

While watching, every ten minutes or so I would ask myself, “Why exactly am I watching this?” I had to remember that people said that they found it funny. So, I stayed and finished the movie.

One thing completely wrong with the movie is the writers and director seem to want to steer completely clear of actually using Spider-Man himself in their “Spider-Man” movies, though they own the rights to the character. An example of this is another movie, “Morbius,” which was also not so good.

During the film, Ben Parker, who is Spider-Man’s uncle, was one of the recurring characters, which I found to be the most interesting part of the movie. However, if you are trying to build the background of a world without Spider-Man, maybe leave everyone related to his story out and focus more on the characters we are being introduced to. By the end, it felt like I got more substance out of Ben than I did any of the Spider-Women I was supposed to care about.

Completely missing throughout the movie were actual fight scenes for Cassandra (Madame Web) herself. Two times to get out of a fight she has to hit the bad guy with a vehicle, and they only encounter this enemy about three times. It’s laziness from the studio and those making the movie.

For a movie that is supposed to be all about Cassandra and her story, I felt there should not have been the addition of the three Spider-Women. While watching, it seemed like they were paperweights to add more substance to the character of Cassandra rather than their own characters. I have seen some of all three actresses’ work and know that they could have done better if the writers had written them better characters.

Sony usually knows how to film a wonderful movie, so I was expecting swing sequences as good as “The Amazing Spider-Man.” Instead, what I got was a confusing and somewhat sloppy film. The movie was dark and when Cassandra was just starting to use her powers, I had no idea what was going on. It is worse that we didn’t even see any spider action besides Cassandra or the villain taking a look into the future and seeing the Spider-Women.

I saw an interview with the three actresses where they were asked, “If you three were up against the three Spider-Men, who would win?” They all said, “Us” and specifically Sydney Sweeny said, “Have you seen my webs?”

I disagree. I couldn’t even see what her character could do to even make the comparison between her and any of the other spider people.

In conclusion, this movie is one of the worst I have decided to sit through in one sitting. I did find the ending to be the best part of the movie, not only because it was over, but because it had me laughing out loud. I know Sony has the ability to make a great Spider-Man movie. I think they need to focus on making The Amazing Spider-Man 3 rather than focusing on random Spider-Man side projects without Spider-Man.

My rating for Madame Web is a 3 out of 10.