Sony has struggled with its Marvel output since they made a deal with the MCU on Spider-Man. This deal allows the MCU to use Spider-Man, but it also says Sony can’t use him in movies other than those co-produced with the MCU. However, Sony still wants to make Spider-Man movies without the main hero.
This has worked with only one attempt, and that was with Venom (see our review of Venom here). While Venom: Let There Be Carnage was also successful, and a third Venom movie comes out later in 2024, the rest of Sony’s attempts at Spider-Man adjacent movies have flopped. Morbius might be one of the worst superhero movies made in the last decade. Other movies like Madame Web and Kraven met long delays, and the first of those has finally come out.
Madame Web has many problems, but is it really as bad as many critics and fans have made it out to be?
Madame Web stars Dakota Johnson as Cassandra Webb. She is a paramedic who works alongside her partner and close friend, Ben Parker (Adam Scott). Yes, this is Uncle Ben. However, the movie is not set up as a period piece, so it doesn’t make sense how it ties into the Spider-Man universe. What makes even less sense is that Ben’s sister-in-law, Mary Parker, is pregnant — with Peter Parker.
The film features a seemingly immortal villain named Ezekiel Sims, a man who killed Cassandra’s mother years ago to steal some mythical spiders that allow him to live an extended life and to have the powers of a spider. However, when he sees his future, a death at the hands of three young girls, he sets out to kill them before they can gain the powers fate has in store for them and kill him.
These girls are Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), and Mattie Franking (Celeste O’Connor). Now, I want to take a small break here and complain about the comic continuity (although it shouldn’t factor into the quality of this movie). Dakota Johnson as Madame Web makes sense because when Peter Parker meets her, she is an elderly woman (and it would happen over 20 years after the events of this movie).
However, Anya and Mattie specifically are teen heroes when Spider-Man is already a hero in the comics, and Julia becomes the second Spider-Woman (and Madame Web in the future). In this timeline, these three teens would be in their late 30s when Peter becomes Spider-Man. How Sony expected this to work is puzzling and likely can only be described as “multiverse.”
With that nerdy explanation out of the way, the movie sees Cassandra use her precog powers to determine when bad things will happen to keep the girls alive until they can finally beat Ezekiel. That has some fun scenes where she sees the bad things happening, but it removes much of the tension from the movie.
Now, Madame Web isn’t as bad as some critics have made it seem. It falls way short of many superhero movies, but it is miles better than Morbius, at least. What makes the film work is the chemistry between Anya, Mattie, and Jessica, although none of them have powers in this film and are only there for Cassandra to save. As for Cassandra, she is easily the weakest character in the movie other than Ezekiel, who is mostly a generic, boring villain.
It was clear this was supposed to be the start of this branch of the Sony franchise. However, since Vulture already fought Spider-Man, and both Morbius and Venom exist here, there is no way it could have fit in. All that is left is releasing the third Venom movie and Kraven before Sony is rumored to be rebooting everything. That might be for the better. Madame Web was not as bad as people claimed, but it was never going to work and will mostly be forgotten when the next Spider-Man movie comes out in the MCU.
