Madame Web review: A desperate comic book misfire that seems embarrassed by its own existence
Madame Web is an $80m (£63m) film with the quality of an unlicensed superhero painted on the side of a carnival ride. It’s desperate and seems embarrassed of itself, the pained shrug of a creative team ordered by Sony executives to keep the wheels turning in their Spider-Man-adjacent universe, all while the actual Spider-Man is out on loan to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Although it’s never clarified, is presumably meant and – where it’s heavily implied a Spider-Man exists, , but everyone is legally barred from mentioning it. The film is set in 2003. There is an Uncle Ben (Adam Scott), whose sister (Emma Roberts) is about to give birth to a boy, whose name she knows but physically cannot utter, as if cursed by an ancient witch. Ben is co-workers with a paramedic named Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson), whose mother was shot dead in the Amazon while pregnant with her. There’s the line, “When you take on the responsibility, great power will come” – a garbled take on Spider-Man’s famous catchphrase, made now to sound like a translation app gone awry.
