Madame WebMD

Your burning questions about 'Madame Web' answered

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The superhero industrial complex is very sick. Since blowing its collective load in Avengers: Endgame in 2019, the “capeshit” movie genre, as it’s derogatorily referred to by haters (me), has seen a steady decline in box office sales and in quality, though the latter is subjective. 

It’s difficult to attribute this phenomenon to one cause. Perhaps fans are simply fatigued after a decade of cultural dominance. Maybe the studios got complacent, realizing they could serve slop on a platter and their audience, brainless slaves to Funko Pops, would clap like seals and beg for more. Why ruin a perfectly good racket?

None of that matters much to me, a person who is openly hostile to superhero movies. What matters to me is that, as the genre writhes and sweats and murmurs nonsense in the throes of fever, it’s finally producing content that I, a plague doctor hovering over its deathbed, can engage with. Content like Madame Web. 

Madame Web is a Sony Pictures movie starring Dakota Johnson, but just barely. Sydney Sweeney, Adam Scott, and Emma Roberts are also in it. Its relationship to Spider-Man, the rights for which are currently on loan to Marvel, is incredibly fraught. Madame Web exists in the Spider-Verse, but is forbidden from saying “Peter Parker” aloud, lest she violate the contract and end her meager, wretched existence. Madame Web is a Greek tragedy about copyright laws. 

Well before opening weekend, there were signs this movie would be “bad.” Dakota Johnson wasn’t just phoning it in during her press junkets. She had an active disdain for the project. A trailer featuring a Billie Eilish song gave us Johnson’s deadpan line reading, “he was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died,” which was memed to hell and back. I couldn’t wait to see it.

On my birthday, February 19th, I saw it in a packed theater in Manhattan. The crowd, whose brains were apparently broken by the internet in the exact same way mine is, were giggling from the very first scene. I loved every minute of it. This isn’t a review, but my review is that Madame Web is the sickness, but she is also the cure. Madame Web is the diagnosis, but she is also the doctor. Madame Web is the question, but also, she is the answer. 

I understand that not everyone will want to buy a ticket to a movie being panned by critics and audiences alike. Some might have great affection for Spider-Man or for superhero movies and be unwilling to see their beloved genre in this state, to see it… like this.

That’s where I come in. I have my sexy nurse hat on and I’m ready to answer all your burning, itching questions about the symptom, the sickness, the savior: Madame Web. I’ll helpfully partition them into spoiler-free and spoiler-ridden sections, starting with spoiler-free answers. 

Is Madame Web a good movie?

No.

Should I see it?

You should see it immediately. Madame Web belongs in the Criterion Collection with a lengthy, labored essay justifying its inclusion. I would write it for free.

What is Madame Web about?

I have two answers for this. The spoiler-free answer is that Madame Web is about Cassandra Webb, a white Latina from Peru who finds her true strength after returning to her homeland and connecting with her ancestors. She meets three young girls in the diaspora who don’t know where they come from or where they belong. Their parents either aren’t interested in them or they are dead. The girls are compared to stray cats. They are ni de aquí ni de allá. 

Though Peruvian, Madame Web is a deeply Mexican-American text. 

What are her powers?

Madame Web’s powers are the same as Raven’s. Not Raven from Teen Titans, but Raven Baxter from That’s So Raven. She has sporadic visions of the future, which allow her to change fate. Mostly, she is a normal woman who hits people with her car. 

How does she get these powers?

She almost drowns in a car. Cars play an incredibly important role in this film. There’s spider nonsense in play, for sure, but she goes through most of her life without any vague future vision abilities until she is trapped in a car and nearly drowned. This near-death experience is a pivotal event, granting her the ability to hit people with cars with greater efficacy. 

Wait, so are there superheroes in this movie?

No.

But I saw the trailer. There were superheroes.

I don’t care what you saw.

Is Dakota Johnson any good in the movie?

I can’t think of a less relevant question. 

Why is it set in 2003?

I don’t know, but Madame Web is extremely interested in reminding you that it’s 2003 and less interested in justifying its decision to be set in 2003. There’s an ad for Dangerously in Love by Beyoncé on a brick wall. “Toxic” by Britney Spears plays on the radio and there are pains taken to inform you it’s a new song. Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man came out in 2002, so maybe that’s why. Madame Web is trapped in a delicate dance with Spider-Man. It must constantly reference “men of the spidery sort” without getting specific. The misery this produces lends an exquisite flavor to the text.

Who’s the bad guy?

I don’t recall. He’s pretty generic. All I know is that he was in the Amazon with Madame Web’s mother when she was researching spiders right before she died, and I only know that from the trailer, because the actual line isn’t in the film. He wants the magic spider because he comes “from less than nothing” and the magic spider gives people powers. 

He’s haunted by nightly visions of three teen superheroes beating him up and killing him, and so he’s on a quest to kill them before they can get their powers. He comes into possession of an insane supercomputer that can track anyone in the world by tapping into every camera on earth. He tells his evil henchwoman, who was apparently in Girls, what the teens from his dream look like (weird), and the computer is able to generate them from mere description. 

Not only that, but the computer can imagine what they look like without their superhero masks on and track them that way. So if we have a computer like this in 2003, what exactly is the point of any secret identity in the future? Why wear masks at all? 

Eh, who cares? Not this movie. Not at all.

So is it in “so bad it’s good” territory?

Despite what I said before, Madame Web eschews primitive binaries such as “bad” and “good.” I find the question a bit offensive. But if you must know, yes. Madame Web achieves an anti-quality that makes unwitting meta-commentary on the genre it has infiltrated. 

And honestly, despite all that, I don’t really get how it’s so dramatically different from every other superhero movie. Sorry she wasn’t on a quest for magic rocks while aliens shot lasers at her or whatever it is you people love. 

Alright. Now we get to the spoiler-ridden portion of the FAQ. I’ll place a little wall here, but knowing Madame Web, she’s going to drive an ambulance through it. 

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Okay, so what is Madame Web really about?

Madame Web is about PepsiCo Inc. There are multiple instances of unabashed product placement for Pepsi. Madame Web is not shy about reminding the audience about the crisp, refreshing taste of Pepsi. 

It’s also about carjacking. The cars she hits people with do not belong to her. Her first weapon of choice is a hijacked taxi, which is later upgraded to an ambulance. It’s implied that this ambulance was for Emma Roberts, whose water broke (she is pregnant with IP that Madame Web can’t mention), and she is already en route to the hospital, so it might be fine, or it might be that Madame Web stole an ambulance meant for someone suffering a heart attack.

RIP, if so. 

What’s your favorite line from the movie?

It’s difficult to say. I have so many. One I keep thinking of is, “You can’t change the future, Scrooge,” which she says to Scrooge while watching A Christmas Carol in what appears to be the middle of July, because her doctor told her to watch an old movie to relax. It’s important to note here that Scrooge does change the future. Canonically, that’s something he does.

Another great one is, “Hope the spiders were worth it, mom.” Madame Web resents her mother for being heavily pregnant and researching spiders in the depths of the Amazon rainforest. She’s doing this to save her, but Madame Web doesn’t know that. She also goes back in time in a vision and, immediately upon seeing her pregnant mother, she screams, “Why did you hate me?” at her.

Any plot holes?

I think Madame Web is ludicrous enough to where plot holes don’t really matter, but it’s incredible to me that she is in the newspapers for having kidnapped three teenage girls and is still able to pretty effortlessly fly to Peru. 9/11 happened two short years ago in the universe of this movie. Or maybe there was no 9/11. Maybe PepsiCo Inc. prevented it. 

In the motel where Madame Web is holding the teens captive, she tells them, “there’s somewhere I have to go,” and you know she means Peru because the movie starts playing Andean pan flutes. Not a plot hole, just something that felt like it was for me.

Do you have any criticisms of Madame Web?

I have one major note. At the end of the movie, Madame Web is outsmarting the villain, whose name escapes me, by maneuvering around a condemned fireworks factory and using her future vision to stay a couple steps ahead of him. They eventually reach the very top of the building while unusually powerful fireworks zig and zag about. These things are blasting through brick walls. 

Because this is a film primarily concerned with PepsiCo Inc., a large Pepsi sign sits atop the roof. Madame Web has a vision of the sign falling, and realizes she must carefully position the bad guy in such a spot that one of the massive letters will hit him and squish him, like a man who is also a spider. A spidery man.

Given this setup, what should happen is that the ‘P’ in ‘PEPSI’ falls and appears to hit them both, but when the smoke clears we see Madame Web standing in the gap in the ‘P’ like in a Looney Tune. I have a scene written in my mind for this. Remember, the movie is about Pepsi, strays, and a sense of belonging. Okay, here’s my version. It really ties all of that together. 

Bad Guy: You’ve lost, Madame Web. I’m going to eliminate those girls. They don’t belong in this world, and neither do you.

Madame Web, staring up at the massive letter ‘P’: Actually…

[The letter falls, killing the bad guy but not Madame Web, who stands in the very center of the hole]

Madame Web: I’m exactly where I need to be.

That would have been a lot better, I think. As it stands, he gets taken out by the letter ‘S’ before the whole building explodes and jettisons Madame Web into the ocean, where she is hit in the face and blinded and paralyzed by a stray firework. Underwater, yes. By a firework, that’s correct.

How does it end?

Being blind and paralyzed has made Madame Web creepy for some reason. She scoots around an apartment in a robotic chair and wears funny glasses. Everyone in my theater was clapping at this point. 

Does her web really connect them all?

Yes, it connects them. 

There is one moment where the generic bad guy, whose lines don’t quite match up with his mouth, is watching the heroes on CCTV footage and mutters, “something connects them…” I raised a triumphant fist to the sky when I heard it. 

Okay, that’s all from me. May her web connect you all.

JP