Review of MADAME WEB: Spider Sensibilities

February 15, 2024

While on a rescue mission at the bridge, EMT Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) herself fell into the river and was only rescued by her partner Ben Parker (Adam Scott) three minutes later.  Even since, she had been able to see ahead into the future, but at first, the images she saw did not make sense to her at once. One day, she began to see images of a man Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) attacking and killing three teenage girls on the train with her. 

Apparently Sims had been having nightmares of these three girls -- shy bespectacled Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), spunky skateboard girl Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor) and smart Latina Anya Corazon (Isabella Merced), that they will be the cause of his death, so he wanted to kill them before that day comes. Cassie quickly hustled the girls out of the train station when they saw Sims fast approaching them -- crawling on the ceiling.

Madame Web was a blind, paralyzed clairvoyant mutant character in Marvel comics,, adjacent to the Spider-Man franchise. Her connection to Spider-Man in this film was only hinted with the presence of familiar names like Ben Parker, and his sister-in-law Mary Parker (Emma Roberts) who was then pregnant with a boy, whose name we knew even before she did. We see in Sims' nightmares that the three teenage girls will all become Spider-Women in their future.

This was Madame Web's origin story set in 2003, but the film started with a sequence set in 1994, about the tragic fate of a pregnant scientist Constance Webb (Kerry Bishe) in the jungle of the Amazon searching for a particular rare spider with a special venom which could heal diseases. This was not exactly her origin story in the comics, but certain details like Cassie's myesthenia gravis were referred to in this new version, albeit in passing. 

The initial reviews were very bad, the worst film about a Marvel character ever, as per one critic. I thought that was too harsh. Sure, the script can be corny, had plenty of convenient leaps in logic, and odd time-wasting scenes (like all those chest compressions). However, Dakota Johnson's portrayal of Cassie from aloof, socially-awkward paramedic into the cerebral psychic Madame Web was well-played, despite the script's limitations. 6/10.