Kaela Sherron

Madame Web, a Sony Productions film, was released on February 14th of this year, and the Rotten Tomatoes reviews do not look promising. Cassandra “Cassie” Web is a young, active paramedic who lives in New York City and gains clairvoyant powers following an accident. Prior to its release, many were excited due to the pictures that had been seen on the internet and they made the film look promising. Those who saw an early release of the film had optimistic views. On TikTok, there is a credible creator, Straw Hat Goofy, who reviews superhero movies. He stated in his video made on February 13th, the day before the movie was released to the public, that he went to the red carpet premiere. “I am still struggling to find something nice to say about this movie,” he said. “I don’t make a bad habit of dashing superhero movies, but I just have to say it because it’s true. This is one of the worst superhero movies that I’ve seen in a long time.”

There is debate on whether Madame Web is a part of the Marvel Universe, where it could relate to the classic character, Spider-Man. However, Sony has made it unclear whether the film is included with Marvel. The actual comic character of Madame Web is Marvel. Peter Debruge wrote an article about the film on Variety in which he writes, “The title mutant– who’s never actually identified by that name — hails from the margins of the Marvel multiverse, which suggests that, much as Sony did with “Morbius” and “Venom,” the studio is scrounging to find additional fringe characters to exploit.”

In other words, Debruge doesn’t find that Sony was successful in this adaptation of the character. Debruge goes on to say, “The script is confusing, the action stale and the visual effects cheap. A recurring device that places Cassie at the center of what looks like a giant plasma ball, surrounded by static tendrils, is downright embarrassing.”

Due to this, many speculate that Sony was grasping at straws to still stay connected within Marvel’s multiverse. David Fear from Rolling Stone said, “The fact that the movie revolved around one of the more obscure players in the Spiderverse didn’t help, making it feel as if Sony was scraping just above the bottom of the barrel.” Not only this, Fear emphasizes that this movie is way worse than it suggests. Fear wrote, “It is the Cats: The Movie of superhero movies. Not a single decision seems of sound mind. Not a single performance feels in sync with the material. Not a single line reading feels as if it hasn’t somehow been magically Auto-Tuned to subtract emotion and/or inflection.”

It seems as though the whole film has many disconnected scenes that were thrown together to make a movie, which is why so many are making negative reviews about it. In my research, I haven’t seen any article that praises the movie, which says a lot. This seems to be a major setback for Sony.