Category: Superhero/Cinematic Universe movie
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I honestly went into this movie with an open a mind as possible. While I enjoyed The Critical Drinker's absolutely stinging barbs, as well as Nerdrotic's take, I made it a point to try enjoy this movie for what it was and as it was.
And I still couldn't.
This movie just doesn't work.
It's a mess.
It's bad.
It's not quite Ghostbusters 2016 bad - but it's still bad.
Before I get into my opinions and observations of the movie, I'll go into an outline of the plot:
In 1973, the heavily pregnant mother of Cassandra Webb (there's a name that foretells a story) is in the jungles of Peru looking for a species of spider that apparently has healing powers. But right after she finds an actual live specimen of this mysterious healing spider, her security man, Ezekiel, shoots everyone and steals said spider. Right after mother Webb is shot, she is taken into a cave by the mystic spider-people of the Peruvian jungle (who seemingly just watched the murders happen and have either no ability or desire to stop Ezekiel stealing their precious spider). In the cave, she gets bitten by a spider with healing powers…and then quickly dies.
Fast forward 30 years and the grown Cassandra works as a paramedic in New York City who drowns after being trapped in a car that falls off a bridge. While she is drowning, her ability to foretell the future is unlocked which plays out in minor ways initially, but then as she deals with grief about a colleague whose death she foresaw, her ability to predict just in time is actually put to good use as she rescues teenagers Julia, Anya and Mattie (Sydney Sweeney, Isabel Merced and Celeste O'Connor) from the now-enhanced Ezekiel (played by Tahar Rahim, but who I initially thought was Mark Ruffalo or Adam Driver). Ezekiel's bugbear in life is that he keeps on having visions of his death at the hands of the aforementioned teenage girls who he tracks down with stolen face-recognition tech from the NSA (yes - the NSA!).Cassie then puts the girls in to hiding while she goes - on a whim, with only a rudimentary map and photos and without any preparation, scientific acumen, vaccinations, protective equipment, visa or language skills - to the same Peruvian jungle that her mum died in, when she is suddenly found by the same spider-dude that assisted her mum all those years ago and who then opens her mind to her past and to new abilities.
Back in America, Ezekiel thinks he has the girls trapped, but to the rescue comes Cassie (without a hint of jet-lag) driving an ambulance through a building, leading to the final showdown in the same fireworks factory that featured in the beginning of the movie. Just to complete the circle, Cassie drowns (again) but is revived (again), only now she is blinded and paralysed by a firework she took to the face while underwater. Bet she didn't see that coming.
Cue final scene where Webb is now a full blind mystic in ridiculous oversized glasses and motorised wheelchair.
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With all that out of the way, I have to say that not only did I not enjoy this movie - it was so haphazard and loose that it was a challenge to find anything redeeming. While superhero movies are meant to have an amount of 'suspension of disbelief' to them, there is also a certain relatability that we want with who and what we see on screen, and in Madame Web, barely anyone or anything was relatable or realistic, or even likable (save for Uncle Ben).
I'll get into what I liked first - some of the premonition scenes and the use of repeated scenarios was good, as well as Webb's maturing response to her premonitions. The throwbacks to 2003 (which is now 21 years ago) were a good bit of nostalgia. I didn't mind the camerawork too much in the scenes where Ezekiel is in his spider uniform.
But as you may have picked up, there are clearly more things I didn't like which I need to get off my chest:
The biggest dislike I have is that Dakota Johnson's performance was essentially Dakota Johnson trying to fulfil a contractual obligation, rather than Dakota Johnson portraying a character with heart and vigour - I don't mean this with any disrespect towards Dakota Johnson, but I just didn't see any range or much realism in her performance here. Yes, the character she is trying to portray is meant to be emotionally insular, but the way that is portrayed is very much a trope to the point that I couldn't help but wonder if a plank of a wood could have done the same job.
As an example, in the early scenes where her character is driving an ambulance with a dying patient in the back, both the dialogue with her colleague in the back and the way she is driving the ambulance scream "phoning it in". What is meant to be a portrayal of two medical professionals in a critical life or death situation just comes across as a hurried trip to the shops before they close.
And then we have the most emotional scene in the movie where Webb enters a vision of why her mum went to the jungle in the first place - it's supposed to be emotional, but Johnson's portrayal at knowing her mum truly loved her was only barely more expressive than the rest of her performance in this movie. While the dialogue told me that this was the big release she was waiting for, the acting sure didn't convey it.
This may have been an issue with the direction or the script or whatever, but whoever greenlit this performance by Dakota Johnson needs to take a step back and wonder where it went wrong.
Next is some of the cringy dialogue, ESPECIALLY at the end. The end scene has the three teenage girls (with no obvious source of income) bringing home takeaway food, Webb tells the girls what they bought, to which the girls ask "Can you see us?" and Webb replies "I can see everything, and I can see you three were meant to be more powerful than you ever realised!" (or words to that effect) played over scenes of the three girls in superhero-mode doing superhero things. Sure, this is obvious sequel bait, but I can't help but think that the girls have lived with a blind Webb for some time already, and only now do they bother to ask "Can you see us?"!
The chatter and trash-talk between the three teenage girls (especially after they just met) were attempts at light humour, and in some ways it got a chuckle, but most of it was just cringy and off-putting.
The plot doesn't escape criticism either:
- After the ambulance and rescue scene takes place, the child of the woman they rescued wants to give a gift to the paramedics, but Johnson's character is extremely reluctant do accept the gift. Do paramedics, especially experienced ones, not know how to handle it when someone wants to thank them? And just to add to the confusion, the gift is just a child's drawing of a mum, dad and child - something with absolutely no relevance to the drama that the paramedics just rescued the mum from! Then just to make it worse still, Johnson's character then puts this drawing in her suitcase of personal items that belonged to her mum. WHY???????
- Why does Ezekiel have visions of the three girls killing him, when in the end, he is killed by a sign falling off a building? I know that predicting the future isn't one of his powers, but there's a reason why he's having the visions (something that is never explained) of being killed by the girls in their full superhero uniform - and yet when he dies, the teenage girls only played a side-role in his death.
- How does Ezekiel murdering an NSA agent and stealing top-secret technology NOT warrant a full-scale manhunt for both their agent and their technology? Instead, Ezekiel can just wander around in public as if 9/11 never happened, as if the NSA aren't using the same face-tracking technology and as if no-one is after him for his crimes.
- How does a tribe of spider people in the jungles of Peru who seemingly try to avoid contact with the outside world speak fluent American English (which for some reason then becomes Spanish-accented)?
- In the taxi after Cass gets the girls out of the subway, it is established that the girls have nowhere to go to and no parental supervision, but then later in a hotel room, when Cass is sick and tired of everything, she wants to send the girls back…to their parents...whom we have already established are absent! And then Julia blurts out that her mum is in a psych ward - WHYYYYYYY?
- Sydney Sweeney as a teenager is barely believable. The other two are slightly more believable...
- Cassie drowns, literally drowns to death, and only one paramedic is there to revive her, without any equipment or support?
- The scene in which the Webb's paramedic colleague gets hit by a truck - we see in the wide shot after the accident that the truck that hit the ambulance was actually headed straight for the river.
Why was the truck was headed straight for the river? If the truck didn't hit the ambulance, then someone else would have died, so I'm not sure how useful Cass Webb's premonitions really are. And how the fuck did the ambulance driver not see this big bastard truck heading straight for him?!?
And don't get me started on the audio - numerous time, the words spoken on screen don't match the mouth movements of the on-screen characters. Something was REALLY off there.
One can't help, but wonder, if Stan Lee's death meant that there is now no longer a final voice of approval on the Marvel superhero films, because in the last few years, they've really gone downhill.
The other thing I also wonder was if the cast knew they were making a superhero movie. Or if they cared.
I can't see any reason to recommend this movie. In a choice between Ghostbusters, Morbius and this, Morbius comes out on top.
FINAL RATING: 2/5
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