Movie Review: Superhero Fatigue Finally Sets in with ‘Madame Web’

What is there to say about S.J. Clarkson’s Madame Web that people aren’t already sharing? When I was in my mid 20s, I predicted superhero fatigue would happen sooner or later. It took a whole decade longer than I was expecting; but after nothing but flops for both Marvel and DC last year — and now with Madame Web from Sony — I feel confident that the general public has finally moved on from the subgenre.

Looking back, the Russo Bros’ Avengers: Endgame (2019) really was the perfect conclusion to the phenomenon, especially after theaters were forced to close for a limited time only two seasons later. Madame Web now unfortunately proves that mediocre shlock won’t be enough in a post-pandemic world.

It’s 2003 in Queens, NY. Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a single cat lady content with her life as a paramedic and ambulance driver. That is until she survives almost drowning while saving a car accident victim and starts occasionally having vivid visions only seconds before they occur in reality.

From there, Cassie has to make sure three teenage girls — mousey Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), street smart Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced) and troublemaker Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor) — aren’t killed by powerful villain Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) after he has his own nightmare premonition of the three girls killing him in the future.

Adam Scott plays Cassie’s ambulance partner Ben Parker, Emma Roberts is Ben’s pregnant sister-in-law, and Zosia Mamet appears as a hacker working for Sims. If it weren’t already reported that Johnson switched agents just as the trailer dropped, you could have guessed how embarrassed she was by Madame Web just from her performance. She barely makes an effort to emote and has some strangely blatant, phoned-in ADR in many scenes, as does Rahim.

Johnson is not a terrible actress, as can be seen in films like Phil Lord & Chris Miller’s 21 Jump Street (2012), Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash (2015) and Tyler Nilson & Michael Schwartz’s The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019). In theory, Madame Web has a very impressive cast with many interesting faces such as Sweeney of HBO’s “Euphoria” (2019- ) and “The White Lotus” (2021), and Scott, who’s usually a funny character actor. But they’re all wasted on lame material.

Roberts, usually at her best playing brats and mean girls, continues to be unconvincing as wholesome girls next door lately. The most baffling casting is Rahim, who broke through with Jacques Audiard’s modern classic A Prophet (2009), and was somehow roped into Hollywood shlock below his talent. 

But the worst part of Madame Web is that — unlike its male equivalent, Daniel Espinosa’s Morbius (2022) — nothing from the movie is at least meme-able. There are no ridiculous scenes that can go viral like Matt Smith’s flamboyant, shirtless dance sequence in Morbius. Madame Web shares the same questionable writing duo for its script, Matt Sazama and Burk Shapeless, yet doesn’t have any kind of “so bad, it’s good” potential the previous flop had.

The dialogue is stale, the characters are bland, the direction is uninspired, the editing is sloppy, the story is derivative. It’s just a very dull movie. It’s the kind of benign boredom that makes you struggle to remember details of scenes after you’ve seen it.

You’re probably wondering, hey, aren’t these characters supposed to be related to Spider-Man? But at this point, who even cares?