ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - MADAME WEB is the End of All Things - Movie Review & Sony's Spider-Man Plan, EXPLAINED!

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

ScreenCrush Rewind tackles all the movie and TV hot topics, offering reviews and analysis of Marvel, Star Wars, and everything you care about right now. Hosted by Ryan Arey, and featuring a panel of industry professionals. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died. Hey, welcome back Screen Crush. I'm Ryan Airy, and I actually can't wait to tell you guys about Madam Webb. First of all, I would like to issue a very public, heartfelt apology to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I feel like over the past couple years, I've been a bit harsh on my beloved MCU, criticizing like Thor Love and Thunder, Secret Invasion, The Marvels. But then, along came Madam Webb. reminder about what life was like before studios cared about us geeks. This is a product of laziness, greed, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes comics great. Everything the MCU is, Madam Webb, is not. But I got to tell you that at times this movie is so bad, so inept, that it actually starts to become fun to watch. Now, I am not saying go buy a ticket. Do not give these people your money. But eventually, hey, if it's ever on T&T and you're flipping through the channels, watch it for a good laugh.

you honestly will not be able to believe how bad this movie is. And I got to say, I'm usually very nice about these things. I don't like to call movies out or get too personal. I think all art is subjective, blah, blah, blah. But the people who made this movie know this is a bad movie. Now, a little bit later, I am going to be joined by some friends to talk about exactly why this disaster of a movie is so bad. And later, I'm also going to explain why the hell I think this movie even got made

to begin with Sony's big plans for the character and why this studio has to please, please, please stop doing this before they ruin Marvel movies for good. But first, here's my take. There were several times during this movie when I kept wondering, are they doing this on purpose? I mean, the people who made this movie, they're not rookies.

They understand filmmaking. And yet, I don't even know where to begin, guys. Dakota Johnson delivers every line with the mototone cadence of a high school student forced to recite lines at a church play. It's honestly like the least weird thing that's happened all day. Like, especially in the film's last five minutes

when she becomes the Madam Webb from the comics, It's hilariously terrible. Dakota Johnson is the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith and she is so checked out during this movie that the only people who can enjoy her performance would be faking it like Charles Foster Kang clapping for his wife in the opera house. Like there is a certain joy also to being in a bad movie.

Like Adam Scott manages to sell every scene and bring a bit of gravitas and humor to his uncle Ben. Whereas Johnson desperately does not want to be here. And you also get that feeling from her press tour. So it's kind of like if AI generated your boyfriend's perfect movie. I wouldn't be surprised if her reps told her, hey, you're gonna do a Marvel,

you're gonna shoot for four weeks, and it's gonna be like money. And she said, oh yes, Marvel, that's a big name, not realizing there's a difference between Sony Marvel and MCU Marvel. There's a difference? Yeah, there's a, what do you mean, there's a difference? You got me, you got me, high five.

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Actually, I do know. Spider-Woman is a great character in the comics, and the studio execs who ordered this movie clearly never read a comic book in their life. It feels like they watched a couple Spider-Man movies and said, okay, cool, get it, just like make Peter Parker a baby, and then the nerds'll love it.

Now, in all fairness, the director, S.J. Clarkson, has directed some great episodes of TV, although this is her first feature film. And boy, does that inexperience show. Actors get no business to do. The cinematography is dull and flat. And there is like no zeal or creative voice to this film. We spend 30 minutes plotting through Cassie's origin story, including this awesome line read from the trailer. He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died. And then the movie gets its first really good sequence, the train

premonitions that we saw in the trailer. Now, like a good movie with artistic vision would have just lost. hopped off that whole first 30 minutes and began with this scene to throw us into the action and make us ask questions. But this movie instead over explains everything as it goes along. Characters just narrate their thoughts to a cat, to a TV, to an empty room. And to Harrahim's Ezekiel Sims is easily the most hilarious comic book villain I have ever seen and not in an on-purpose way. A huge chunk of his lines are ADR, additional dialogue recording, meaning they were recorded like after they shot the film. Now, normally you can't tell when a line is ADR because the sound mixer will blend in the new track with room tone.

But in this movie, it is like so obvious every time he has a line dubbed in. His lips don't even match the words half the time like an old Flintstone's cartoon. And his cadence is so strange, it reminded me of this. I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi, Mark. Now, I should note that Rahim is French, and maybe this accounts for his strange cadence, or even why they had to ADR so many of his lines.

I'm sure he's a wonderful actor, but boy, not in this movie. And there is a scene like in the beginning where spider people in the Amazon run through the woods, and it looks just like the running effects in Twilight. In fact, every scene in the Amazon feels like an S&L sketch. It's shot with flat TV lighting on an unconvincing set, just like the whole rest of the movie. And the editing is loaded with blur fade transitions, which feel like they're in there just to pad the runtime.

What's a blurfade transition? This. Oh, gotcha, cool. The movie is set in 2003, and it feels like it was made in 2003. The CGI is ugly, and there is a fundamental. mental misunderstanding of what makes superhero movies work. Like, I expected this kind of movie from the 2000s, but after the MCU has given us nearly 20 years of great adaptations,

this film's kind of insulting. So later I'm going to talk about how the hell this movie actually got made, but first, Matt Singer, what did you make of Madam Webb? It wasn't a good movie, Ryan. It was bad. It was really bad. It's a bad movie. It's a total mess. I was hoping I would, you know, look,

the trailer and you read a few things, you hope it's going to at least be kind of fun. And there's a few exceptions. There was a few moments I laughed. At times it's just so, you know, it approaches that territory of being so bad. It's good. But a lot of it I just found very depressing and boring. And the, you know, I saw it. I paid it.

I bought a ticket. I went to see it in a theater, the first showing. um yesterday and you know there was maybe 20 25 people in the theater in a big theater and you know i would occasionally chuckle and laugh and otherwise it was the silence that enveloped that room while this film played i i told you it was like monks spend their entire lifetimes trying to achieve the inner quiet that i experienced in that room it was it was truly i've never seen a film play worse in a theater than then this is a guy who's seen thousands of a bad movie in a theater well but i mean again like at least sometimes when a movie

is is really bad you'll hear people kind of enjoying the experience of just how bad it is this it was like you could hear a pin you could have heard a spider drop a pin onto a web while they were researching it in the Amazon. That is how quiet it was at this scene theater. Matt Singer Editor in Chief Screencrush dot com. Thanks for that hot take. So Harriet Lingle Inright, you are

our production manager or lead editor. You're the person who's always behind the scenes, one of the people who's responsible for making our videos look great. And you and I went to go see Madam Webb together in a Sony screening room. And Matt said it borders on so bad, it's good. You and I actually kind of

genuinely laughed at the movie, times. Did you think this movie was so bad it's good in places? In places, absolutely. I mean, in our theater, like, there were a good number of lines that had the entire crowd, like, roaring with laughter at certain lines or cuts. Never with the movie. Don't get me wrong. Oh, no, no, no, no. Never intentionally. I don't think the movie ever actually tries to make a joke. There's one. There's one intentional joke when she tries to climb a wall because she thinks she might have Spider-Man.

Oh, God, that was bad. It has something to do with Spider-Man. That is an attempt at a joke. That's one. There is one. I forgot. Block that out. Oh, my God, that was so bad.

Yeah. How about you? Oh, sorry, Harry. Continue one. Oh, no. I do think it dips into boring, like about 75% of the way through it. But it comes back to hilarious in the last 20 minutes. There was one smash cut in this movie.

Spoiler for this masterpiece of a film. There was one smash cut where she, like, is told, I have to go to Peru. And then it cuts to her, drop me the teenagers off at Adam Scott's house. And it's like, she already left the kids alone in the woods, or should I say a set that looks like the woods for three hours, like just unprotected with no food or water. And hey, go pee in the trees, kids. And then she leaves to go to Peru, a set that looks like Peru. I kept thinking, Colton all the way through this, Colton Ogburn, who, by the way, is the guy who's trapped eternally in our television, but doesn't know, so please don't tell him. Colton, I kept thinking all through the movie, was this on purpose?

Like, competent people who make a living in Hollywood put this film together. What were you, what, what were you, what was your, what? Well, Ryan, what's you're missing is she left them with Spider-Man's uncle, so that's why it works. I mean, it has something to do with Spider-Man. Oh, you're right. So, look, I went to the movie. Wait, who was, he was what? Who was he?

What? That's right. Adam Scott was the uncle, Ben. And there's this line, I can't believe, I'm just not thinking of this, guys. There was this line where Ben says, or had said to Cassie, and she repeats it, he likes being an uncle. No, I remember it's one of the kids says, Ben says he likes being uncle because it's all the fun and none of the responsibility. And then Cassie has this sly smile on her face where she, She says, that's what he thinks, because she knows her best friend's going to be murdered in the future.

That's great. Oh, I didn't get that funny gag before. That's fantastic. It's so good. Oh. But in all, what do you, guys, okay. Sony wants to make spider movies, I guess, not Spider-Man movies, but Spider-Movies, any which way they can. Later on, I'm going to talk about why I think that they did Madam Webb instead of Spider-Web.

woman but what you know this is supposed to be sony's year they got three of their spider adjacent films this year marvel cinematic universe only has one and they just start off with this what were they thinking matt what were they trying to get gone here you think boy that's a good question i don't know and i was thinking about this you know even i didn't even think of this while i was writing my review i thought of this afterwards it's like has there ever even been a madam web comic book like I guess maybe there might have been like a one shot somewhere here or there. There certainly has never been like an ongoing Madam Webb comic. So you have a character here who's never supported her own comic book.

And they gave her her own movie. And that's like unbelievable. Like why would you do that? I really don't, I really don't have an answer for that. And I think the movie itself, it shows that they didn't have an answer for that because they threw so many things. in here. I mean, this is a Madam Webb that doesn't look like

Madam Webb, act like Madam Webb. They threw in these other spider women characters to kind of judge it up and give you a little bit of a flavor of, you know, spider heroes. They made the villain who's actually a really interesting

character in the comics who's not a villain. Very much so. Very much so. Yeah, they made, but they gave him this ridiculous, vaguely spider man-ish costume. So that, again, there's like sort of a Spider-Man, like, they're just desperately trying to make a Spider-Man movie out of this material where it doesn't really make a ton of sense, because it is a prequel, and the character is, you know, in the comics, by her very nature, is totally

inactive. And, you know, they're like, how do we make an action movie out of this? And I don't think they ever found a satisfying answer. But as to why, I guess they felt like maybe they could use this character elsewhere if they set her up this way. I mean, I guess you could have used her without this movie, and I feel like they've now made the the character so radioactive, no pun intended,

that will never see her again. But maybe that's what they were thinking? Right. Yeah, I got my own theories I'll talk about later on. I do want to just not beat up on it the entire time. I do want to, I flagged earlier, I talked about Adam Scott, very good, in this role as good as you can be in this movie. I love watching a good actor in a bad movie.

And Harriet, you know, afterwards, you and I, like, we genuinely enjoyed laughing at this movie. It's like Garth Marengi's Dark Place, but not on purpose. Is there a circumstance when you would see yourself saying to someone, a loved one, hey, I got an idea. I got a movie for us to watch. I mean, I've already said that to many people. I came back and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, texts of my friends, I was like, you know, I just saw Madam Webb, it is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, we are watching it next weekend. So, you know, I'm actually very excited to watch it again, to inflict it on others. But, yeah, I mean, I think there, the thing, the only thing that makes me sort of sad about it is that I felt like about the time I started

to get bored, I also saw, like, the ghost of the movie that it could have been if it was good. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. And what was that movie like? I mean, I do like the inherent premise of like an older sister aunt character and like these three young super heroines. I'm into that and as an idea, especially if like, you know, maybe she doesn't even have to be a character from the comics. She could be an original character. Like, that would be fine with me because she might as well be an original character anyway. So if, if, this movie had been at all well-written or competent,

I actually would have been kind of excited about it, but as it stands, at least it's enjoyable in a different way. It's so crazy to think, too, you know, Sidney's Starr was way on the rise, you know, and she's somebody who can really kind of, she's getting to a point where she can have her pick of roles, and she probably would have been cast,

like had this movie been cast now as Spider-Women, like people would have been like really courting her to be in a major superhero blockbuster, and sometimes it's like, Jared Harris and Morbius, you're like, what? Somebody that good played that role in that movie? I do wonder, though, Colton, with Sony, right? And we're looking at their plan.

Like, the closest indication we have of their plans is that awesome Morbius post-credit scene, you know the one. Look at that. What do you think they wanted to do with Madam Webb and the spider women and whatever, the Craven and Venom and The Sinister Six, they had to have had something in mind for the franchisor. I can't see why this movie would get made. It's like the mummy of the dark universe

or whatever the hell they're doing. What are your thoughts? Got any theories? I'm genuinely curious if Sony in like the Sony pictures and like the filmmakers making these movies, it's like they don't know that, and it's obvious that in their contract with Marvel Studios, that they can't, you know, just,

use Tom Holland's Spider-Man. Yet for some reason, they just keep throwing these Spider-Man references into the movie. You know, they wanted Spider-Man to be in Venom, and there were the reports that Marvel Studios was like, no, that violates the contract. You can't just use them willy-nilly. It's almost like every movie they make,

they then have to remake it in the edit and, like, put in, like, awful ADR and stuff just to rework the movie to not include, you know, not have like a major Spider-Man connection. There were reports that this movie once had a major Spider-Man connection. I think Harriet is spot on that there is a ghost of this movie. Was there Andrew Garfield?

Was that what the rumor was, that he was going to be involved, or his character, his version was involved somehow? The original reports for what this movie was going to be about. It was going to be like a Terminator-type thing. There was a villain traveling into the past to kill Spider-Man's mother, so Spider-Man was never born. I liked that. That sounded way cooler.

This was awful. And it would have been so much better to get back to your question of what is Sony doing? I think Sony, they have to let go of Spider-Man. I know they own the movie rights, but they made the decision to put them into the MCU. They have to accept the fact and read their legal paperwork that they can't just, there's no reason to keep teasing Spider-Man when you know you can't actually use it. Why aren't they, like, capitalizing on the fact that they have a beloved character in Venom? Venom is a very, you know, beloved comic book character.

You know, you can say what you want about his movies, but I think people have a fun time with the movie version of Venom they created. Why aren't they making him the center point of their movies? And instead of just this... Yeah, Hunt Venom! Have Madam Webb, instead of being over a web, and you can't even include friggin' Spider-Man, have it be the hive-mine thing that Madam West. or that uh venom talked about and venom let there be carnage have her be like have a symbiate

suit and stuff but go all in on what you can actually do instead of just these vague you know i think it has something to do with spider man that's their entire thing that is their entire um like idea for their sony spider man verse is it has something to do with spider man but he's not actually there and when when your biggest draw is not there it's not going to work you've got to the They've got a shift if they're going to make this work. And I really think it's too late. I think Craven's the last Sony Spider-Movie. Well, Venom's coming out after that, I think.

But, Matt, you know you're the author of Spider-Man from Amazing and to Spectacular. You know Spider-Man, in and out, better than I ever could. And you also know Hollywood really well. I would love to see Sony do what Colts insane and relent, but I've never seen a situation where a corporation gave up money or potential money because it was the right thing to do. I think they would sooner just yank Tom Holland back. from Marvel and just do their own thing.

Maybe there's a circumstance, though, where they would have so many spider-related bombs in a row that they would go, look, we're poisoning our brand, and we could maybe get some money out of us. We could sell the rights back to Marvel for $5, $10 billion, which long-term would be a good investment for Disney. Is there any circumstance you see here where Sony relents, or what do you think they would do in the future here?

Well, what you're describing seems much more plausible to me than them just going actually we're bad at making these we're going to stop like there's no universe where that happens but yeah I could potentially see them maybe selling it back I guess at a certain point that seems

it seems more plausible anyway I mean the funny thing here is I do agree that they're doing a lot of damage to this brand the ironic thing is they're doing no damage to their own brand they're doing damage to Marvel's brand because all of these movies are Marvel movies and they say Marvel

in front of them. And I don't think a lot, you know, I think there's a lot of people, certainly no one on this Zoom discussion, but I think most people out there, they don't pay that much attention, and they probably think this is a Marvel movie. It has Marvel's old logo in front of it anyway. I was texting with someone yesterday who hasn't seen it, who's, you know, who's actually a writer, but doesn't, you know, doesn't, doesn't follow these things that closely. And they were like, boy, Marvel's got another flop on their hands and I think Morbius did the same yeah and I certainly wasn't gonna be like actually this is a Sony movie they just owned the license too much like I wasn't like and I don't think that that's that uncommon so the funny thing is they could botch all of these and the person that they're

hurting is Marvel like wouldn't you just love to like sit next to Kevin Feigy while he watches this movie just to watch him wouldn't it be way more entertaining than actually watching Madam Webb? I feel like that would be incredible actually just to watch like I don't know I don't know how he would react I don't think it would be very positive though but that would be amazing it would be incredible it would be amazing and spectacular so yeah do do I see them giving up this license no but I do think we probably will reach a point where they stop trying to turn the Madam Webb's and the Cravens and the Morbius of the world into their own franchise because clearly that is not not working. I guess it worked with Venom, but in these other instances, it has backfired spectacularly. I mean, Venom already had a solo title in a video game and a following, and then, you know, the fandom and people were buying the merge. That's different. That would be like, you know, the Punisher is owned by Marvel, but he started off in a Spider-Man comic. It'd be like saying that Punisher was a spinoff. No, Punisher's been his own thing for years.

I don't, I mean, like maybe Black Cat, Black Cat's a pretty cool character who's been around for a while and has had her own solo books, but not a long-running one, you know, it would be like if Warner Brothers had the rights to Superboy instead of Superman. It's, it doesn't really work doing it that way. So thank all you guys for joining us, and you can find all of everybody's social links below. So my main thought all the way through this movie was how in the hell did this thing get made? To quote my friend Captain Midnight, nobody ever watched a Spider-Man movie and said, hey, you know what? This movie would be great. If only pesky Spider-Man wasn't in it. I want to learn more about Craven or Madam Webb. So I'm not going to rehash the whole Sony

Marvel history here, but you guys know that Sony has the film rights to Spider-Man and Spider-adjacent characters. And since 2012, Sony's tried to cram their own cinematic universe down our throats. It's what gave us great cinema like this. But I think a bunch of guys like us should team up. Could do some good. Intriguing. But of all the Spider characters to adapt, why Madam Webb? Why not just do Spider-Woman?

Because Madam Webb is connected to the multiverse. She's a character who they probably wanted to bring together different Spider-Cyter. characters from different universes into one movie. Like, there have been rumors that Sony and Marvel are disagreeing about the direction of Spider-Man 4. Marvel wants a street-level movie where he fights the kingpin alongside Daredevil, which I think I can safely say all of us fans actually want. But Sony wants another big multiversal crossover like No Way Home because they smell the money.

And this is because Sony doesn't care about story or character, they care about money. They want to strip the meat off the carcass of this IP and slap the word Marvel onto mediocrity, hoping that we bought into the shittomatic universe like a low-grade hot dog filled with rat droppings and newspapers. The movie was written by the writing team of Sizama and Sharpless. Now, their resume is filled only with box office and critical bombs like Dracula Untold, The Last Witch, Hunter, Gods of Egypt, Power Rangers, and Morbius. Now, in all fairness, Dracula Untold and Power Rangers weren't the worst, but they did bomb at the box office. So how do people like this continue to fail up? I suspect that the studios love these guys because

they do what they're told. After all, Dracula Untold was rewritten at the last minute to accommodate Universal's dark universe changes. Like, I don't know. I'm sure they're nice people who can write a better movie than I ever could, but the studios keep interfering with the creative vision and ruining good films. But in this case, I think this is a movie that was entirely dreamed up by a studio. They so obviously combed through their IP and said, oh, do one about a woman, Valentine's Day, we can't lose. Look, look, guys, we can criticize the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a lot of things. uniform product, overnoting, changing their minds at the last minute, overworking VFX artists. But at least Marvel Studios actually cares if their movies are good.

They care about the fans. The people who made this movie seem to only care about a paycheck. And here's the thing. I actually think a Spider-Man-centric cinematic universe could work. But Sony, if you're going to do it, then just do it. Don't share the character with the MCU and actually play Spider-Man in these movies. Don't show them in the trailers as graffiti or as a baby. Just show a Spider-Man.

Please, I'm begging you. So guys, big shout out to our guests for this video. You can find all their links down on the socials below. And tell me what you thought of Madam Webb down in the comments or at me on Twitter. And if it's your first time here, please subscribe and smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Airy.