Madame Web opens this week with pretty bad buzz. Let’s get one thing out of the way first. Not every Marvel movie by Sony has been bad. For my money, they’re behind the two greatest Spider-Man movies ever made, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse. And there’s the Venom movies. Those are elevated B-movies, but they’re a decent amount of fun thanks to Tom Hardy’s merciless scenery chewing, and the grosses for those flicks have been astronomical. Clearly, someone likes them. But Morbius…Morbius.
Of course, one of the reasons people aren’t hyped about Madame Web is that the character isn’t exactly a household name. For those who aren’t in the loop, in the comic, Madame Web is a paralyzed, blind clairvoyant, which is distinctly not what Dakota Johnson is playing here. She’s already appeared, in a manner of speaking, in Across the Spider-Verse as a guidance counsellor, voiced by Rachel Dratch.
So it seems Sony’s taken a loose approach in adapting the character to the big screen, which is fine. I think people have been down on it because of the meme-worthy trailer. Those posters, which looked whipped together, didn’t help, with everyone assuming this would be just another B-superhero movie.
