Surprise, ‘Madame Web’ is an early contender for worst movie of 2024

“Madame Web,” the fourth film in the SSU (“Sony’s Spider-Man Universe”)—yes, that’s really a thing—is a fascinating disaster that had me guffawing at its many random moments of unintentional hilarity and chuckling at the complete lack of give-a-fucks on display.

I’m a comic-book nerd and I still had to Google so much of what’s happening in the film that I’m fairly certain people who don’t know the difference between Spider-People, Spider-Girl or Spider-Woman, actually women, as there are two versions of Spider-Woman in the film, are going to be wholly lost.

Madame Web herself, as a character, debuted in a “Spider-Man” comic in 1980, and she played significant roles in many storylines. However, it’s difficult if not impossible to imagine Dakota Johnson’s version of Madame Web, aka Cassandra Webb, will make the leap from Sony into the actual MCU.

That said, “Madame Web” is thankfully better than Sony’s last SSU entry, “Morbius”; if you’ve actually seen that abomination of a shitshow starring Jared Leto, you will appreciate what I’m saying.

Just remember, better is relative, given the quality of product we’re working with.

We start out in Peru in 1973. Constance Webb is searching for a magical spider. She finds it; gets shot by the bad guy, Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim), who steals the spider; she gets carried off by Spider-People of the Peruvian jungle; gets bitten by a different magical spider; gives birth; and dies.

Then we jump to New York in 2003.

Why 2003? Who knows.

Cassandra is a paramedic working with Ben Parker (Adam Scott). That’s right, Uncle Ben, aka the guy who raises Peter Parker and tells him ‘with great responsibility…,’ which means that we’re in a world where Spider-Man has yet to exist. I think.

Then Cassandra dies. It’s not a spoiler, it’s in the trailer. And suddenly the magical spider venom injected into her mom 30 years earlier finally kicks in. I think. And then Cassandra starts having lots of premonitions, which are jarring and disruptive to the narrative flow, and everywhere she looks glass is cracked like a spider’s web.

Oh, and Ezekiel is also in New York, and he gets sexy with a spy so he can take her ID key fob so he can go steal access to a super computer, and then hold some other poor character named Amaria (Zosia Mamet) hostage, while she scours facial recognition software to find three high school girls who will grow up to become Spider-Woman, Spider-Woman and Spider-Girl, respectively, even though that’s not really explained very well, at all.

And then suddenly Cassandra is on a subway with the three teens and Ezekiel shows up dressed like dark Spider-Man (seriously, he’s in a black spider suit) and I wrote in my notes, WTF is happening and I know Spider-Man, and then Cassandra steals an NYC taxicab to drive the three girls away from the mean, bad Ezekiel-spider-dude, and suddenly “Madame Web” became interesting.

Why? Because that fucking taxicab goes everywhere. And not one single cop in all of New York or New Jersey seems to care.

Cassandra smashes the cab into a diner in front of dozens of witnesses, runs over a guy and drives it away, and there’s not one APB in sight. She uses a crowbar to remove both license plates, and keeps driving the cab all over the city, and no one stops her. She parks it in an alley and then apparently somehow gets on a plane to Peru without a passport, goes and meets with the Spider-People, learns her true history, and then sneaks back over the border into the U.S., and immediately resumes driving the busted-up taxicab without license plates, which apparently remained untouched in an alleyway in New York City for more than a day. Um…yeah, right. Only in the movies, folks.

Eventually, Cassandra steals an ambulance and starts driving that all over New York City too, including through buildings, and no one cares about that either.

Later, Cassandra has a premonition that involves a helicopter and I wrote in my notes, She’s going to steal a helicopter!; she doesn't, but hopefully you can tell just how intoxicating this terrible, awful, nonsensical, so bad it’s almost—almost—tolerable movie really is.

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