The 7 Most Ridiculous Moments In Madame Web, Ranked By Our Headaches
This post contains spoilers for "Madame Web."
When Marvel was in dire financial straits in the late 1990s, the company licensed the film rights to Spider-Man to Sony Pictures. When Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" became a gigantic hit in 2002, it was clear Sony would do whatever it takes to keep those rights in-house and never let them revert back to Marvel. There was simply too much money to be made with that character (and the literally 900-plus other Spider-Man adjacent characters they also had the rights to). Sony has since collaborated with Marvel Studios on the Tom Holland Spider-Man films, but until they figure out what the next official Spider-Man adventure is going to be on the big screen, the company is still contractually obligated to release a Spider-Man or Spider-Man adjacent movie every few years to retain those valuable rights.
Enter "Madame Web," which feels less like a movie and more like Sony's pitch for the least interesting way they could keep that deal afloat on a technicality. It's a lifeless bore, a superhero film with action that's almost as exciting as Dakota Johnson's disaffected line readings. Yes, the trailer made it look bad, but somehow the end result turned out to be even worse; it's the type of movie that drains the life out of you as you watch it.
There are dozens of ridiculous things about this film, but here are seven that made me sigh, close my eyes, and rub the bridge of my nose.
7. Zosia Mamet's computer skills
The film's villain, Ezekiel Sims, has been haunted by dreams of three young women dressed in Spider-Woman costumes who will ultimately kill him, so his goal in this film is to hunt them down and kill them before they can do the same to him. But since the women haven't become superheroes yet, he's hunting down three teenagers — people he's never actually seen in real life. Most of the film is set in 2003, so there's a subplot about Sims stealing NSA surveillance technology and hiring a computer whiz played by Zosia Mamet to use it to track down the girls.
The trouble is, he's only seen these girls in his dreams, which results in one of the most ridiculous scenes in the movie. "This is what they look like in your vision to the best of your memory," Mamet gravely intones to Sims as she pulls up three images on her computer screen. The images, which are implied to have been either somehow sketched by her or created by some kind of artificial intelligence rendering software that operates solely on verbal descriptions of subjects, are perfect, photo-quality recreations of exactly what these characters look like. Gimme a break.
6. Only you can prevent forest fires
At one point, Madame Web (who is never called that in the movie) drives the three teens out to the woods and leaves them alone there for three hours so she can go home and do some research. The story follows Madame Web's hunt for clues, and when it cuts back to the girls in the woods, they've somehow managed to build a small campfire. By this point, it's been hours since Madame Web left them. The trio decides to walk to a nearby diner, which explicitly goes against the instructions they were given, but sure — they're bored and hungry, so I get it.
However, what I do not get — and cannot condone — is the fact that they just leave their open flame burning in the woods when they walk away! Nary a thought is given to stamping it out or even kicking a little dirt on it. This is terrible camping etiquette, folks. Smokey the Bear would be furious.
5. Ben Parker is terrible at his job
Cassie and her pal Ben Parker (Adam Scott) work as EMTs in New York City. Ben is portrayed as a mostly competent person throughout this movie, but there's one scene that indicates that maybe he's actually awful at his job. Responding to an emergency call, Cassie and Ben are helping patients outside of a warehouse. Ben and a colleague have strapped a patient onto a rolling gurney and are calling out his injuries as they move him toward an ambulance — but Cassie, who's crouched over her own patient and administering treatment 10 feet away from Ben and her other colleague, diagnoses Ben's patient on the move. "Wait!" she yells, stopping Ben in his tracks. "Check his abdomen!" Confused, Ben pokes around in the guy's stomach for a second, and then exclaims, "Internal bleeding! Nice catch!" before moving the patient on to the ambulance.
If Cassie had used her clairvoyant abilities to discover there was some kind of hidden problem with the patient that wasn't easily identifiable, that would be a heroic use of her powers. But that's not what happens. Instead, the movie would rather have us think that Ben Parker apparently just doesn't follow basic procedural steps in his job as an EMT. Again, if that was a part of his character development, or was meant to illuminate anything about what kind of person he is or how he thinks about his work, I can see a moment like that being necessary. Unfortunately, almost nothing about "Madame Web" feels necessary — least of all this moment.
4. Not exactly superhero behavior
Late in the movie, Sims is poised to murder the three girls (plus Ben Parker and his extremely pregnant sister-in-law, Mary) by blowing up their vehicle with a bomb. But Cassie comes crashing through a Calvin Klein ad in her ambulance, knocking Sims down and averting the deaths of her friends.
However, the bomb rolls under a different car and blows that one up instead.
Not a single one of our progatonists, including the two characters who are EMTs by trade, seem to care an iota about this explosion. They never look to see if that car was full, if any innocent civilians died in the explosion, or if anyone needs any help afterward. I know Sims isn't dead and Mary is about to give birth, so there's a lot going on at the time. But in a movie that's ostensibly supposed to be about superheroes (or in this film's case, just one hero — it actively deceives audiences into thinking that Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O'Connor, and Isabela Merced are going to suit up as Spider-Women, but they're only seen wearing those costumes in quick flash forward visions), you'd think that someone would behave in a heroic way when a bomb goes off in New York City (two years after 9/11, mind you). Instead, no one cares.
3. Cassie's mom's mission in the Amazon
The film begins with Cassie Webb's very pregnant mom studying the peptides of rare spiders in the Amazon, and later we realize she's doing this to find a cure for myasthenia gravis, a debilitating disease that her yet-to-be-born daughter Cassie has been diagnosed with.
So let me get this straight: She travels to Peru super late in her pregnancy, is hanging out in the jungle miles away from any medical facilities, and she thinks that not only is she going to find this apparently rare spider, but also somehow synthesize a cure and inject it into her daughter, all before she's born? That's an incredibly ambitious plan. And if that's not her plan, why wouldn't she just wait to go to Peru until after her pregnancy? Seems much safer and more reasonable to me — but hey, I'm not a world-class scientist/arachnid researcher with a penchant for photography.
2. Ezekiel Sims' Spider suit
Sims inexplicably dresses in a spider suit. Did he get the idea from Las Arañas, the legendary Peruvian spider-people who live in the Amazon and apparently cursed him when he stole that rare spider from Cassie's mom in the opening scene? It seems like the answer is yes, but why would he want to look anything like the people who cursed him? That'd be like the Beast from "Beauty and the Beast" dressing up like the enchantress who curses him in the beginning of the story.
(And did Sims physically sew his own suit, like Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker in the Sam Raimi trilogy?)
This character seems to be more powerful than Spider-Man, because not only does he seem to have clairvoyant powers of his own, but he can climb on walls and poison people with a paralyzing venom just by touching them. Why would he wear this suit at all? Doesn't it call lots of attention to him? In a crowded place like New York City, wouldn't it be more effective to dress like a forgettable figure, blend into the mass of people, and try to subtly take out your targets instead of potentially drawing national attention due to wearing a costume in a timeline that does not yet have any superheroes or supervillains roaming around? I have some questions for this man.
1. Cassie's Amazon trip
At one point, Cassie decides to take a trip to Peru to get some answers about her heritage. There are a couple of shots to indicate her travel status — a plane, then a car driving past an overgrown sign — but then she's just ... walking in the jungle with no guide. She's armed with her mom's old notebook, which, in the most generous possible read, could have had the coordinates or a detailed description of the location in question in it. But nothing can excuse this next bit of nonsense.
Cassie holds up a photograph that her mom took, lowers the photo, and the terrain she's currently looking at is exactly the same as what's in the picture. You're telling me that she just happened to randomly wander into the exact same spot where her mom took a photo 30 years earlier? That is some "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"-level crap right there. Remember when Daisy Ridley's Rey held up a knife with a map in it and just so happened to be standing in the exact right spot at the exact right distance where the floating ruins of the Death Star aligned perfectly with the knife as she held it in front of her face? God, what a terrible movie that was.
Anyway, if you'd like to know more about "Madame Web," /Film's Ethan Anderton and I had a spoiler-filled conversation about the movie on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:
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