From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through.
Cassandra Webb, a.k.a. “Madame Web,” was created by Denny O’Neil & John Romita Jr. in Amazing Spider-Man #210 in 1980. An elderly precognitive who suffers from both blindness and myasthenia gravis, leaving her both sightless and immobile, she has assisted Spider-Man on any number of occasions, starting with her first appearance where she aided Spidey in rescuing the publisher of the Daily Globe from a murderous underling.
She continued to appear periodically in Spidey’s titles, during which she was temporarily de-aged and also had her ability to see and walk restored. She was later re-aged and then killed at the conclusion of the “Grim Hunt” storyline in 2010’s Amazing Spider-Man #637 by Joe Kelly, Michael Lark, Marco Checchetto, Stefano Gaudiano, & Matt Southworth. She transferred her powers to Julia Carpenter, the second Spider-Woman, later Arachne, and who is now the current Madame Web.
Carpenter first appeared as Spider-Woman in 1984’s Secret Wars maxiseries by Jim Shooter & Mike Zeck. Based out of Denver, Carpenter was the victim of a government experiment that gave her powers. She later joined the government agency Freedom Force—the only hero in the group, which was otherwise made up of members of Mystique’s iteration of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She later joined the West Coast version of the Avengers, and was also part of the Secret Defenders, Force Works, and Omega Flight, at one point losing her powers. When they were restored, she went by the name Arachne.
That’s because someone else had the Spider-Woman name at that point: Mattie Franklin. First appearing in 1998’s Amazing Spider-Man #441 by John Byrne & Rafael Kayanan, she was part of a ritual called the Gathering of Five, conducted by Norman Osborn, and which resulted in her getting powers. Franklin had her own series for a while, during which she changed her costume on a regular basis, but it only lasted eighteen issues. Since then, she has appeared in various titles, among them Alias, Loners, Silk, and Contest of Champions II.
Then there’s Anya Corazon, a.k.a. Araña and Spider-Girl. Created by Joe Quesada, Fiona Avery, & Mark Brooks for the 2004 revival of Amazing Fantasy, Corazon had her own Spider-Girl title for a time, the second such (the first was an alternate future starring the daughter of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson). She, too, has continued to be a regular presence in the Marvel Universe.
Then there’s Ezekiel Sims, a businessman who undergoes a ritual to give himself spider-powers similar to that of Spider-Man. He first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #30 in 2001 by J. Michael Straczynski & John Romita Jr.
All of the above were adapted for the screen in Madame Web. This is the latest part of Sony’s attempt to build a Spider-Man-adjacent cinematic universe despite not really being able to feature Spider-Man, following two Venom movies and Morbius (and continuing later this year with Kraven the Hunter and a third Venom film).
The film primarily takes place in 2003, with Cassandra Webb first getting her precognitive powers and figuring out how to use them properly. One of her visions shows Ezekiel Sims killing Mattie Franklin, Anya Corazon, and Julia Cornwall (Carpenter’s maiden name in the comics). None of the three girls have powers yet, though they will in the future. However, the movie sets up a present-day status quo with Madame Web as an older blind paraplegic like she is in the comics.
The film features Dakota Johnson as Webb, Sydney Sweeney as Cornwall, Isabela Merced as Corazon, Celeste O’Connor as Franklin, Tahar Rahim as Sims, Adam Scott as Ben Parker (yes, that Ben Parker, previously played by Cliff Robertson in Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man 3, and by Martin Sheen in The Amazing Spider-Man), Emma Roberts as the very pregnant Mary Parker (played by Embeth Davidtz in The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and yes she gives birth to her son Peter in the film), Mike Epps as O’Neil, Kerry Bishé as Webb’s mother, Zosia Mamet as Sims’ pet hacker Amaria, José María Yazpik as Santiago, and Jill Hennessey as an NSA agent.
The film did poorly both in terms of reviews and box office, and a sequel seems unlikely. Johnson has reportedly said she’s not interested in doing another superhero film of any kind…
“Seriously, don’t do dumb things.”
Madame Web
Written by Kerem Sanga and Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless and Claire Parker & S.J. Clarkson
Directed by S.J. Clarkson
Produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura
Original release date: February 14, 2024
In 1973, a pregnant woman, Dr. Constance Webb, is in the depths of the Amazon jungle in Peru trying to find a particular spider that allegedly has healing properties. Handling her security is Ezekiel Sims, who is very eager for her to find the damn spider. Rumor has it that locals use the spider’s venom to give themselves paranormal abilities. When she finally finds it, Sims shoots Webb’s assistants and stabs Constance, leaving her to die. After Sims buggers off with the spider, the aforementioned locals, Las Arañas, find Constance and have one of the spiders bite her. However, she only survives long enough to give birth to a daughter, Cassandra.
In 2003, Cassie Webb is a paramedic, working alongside Ben Parker. As they’re driving their ambulance to the hospital, a kid crosses in front of them and gives them the finger. They get their patient to the hospital, where the patient’s daughter gives them a drawing by way of thanks, and they witness an awkward moment involving the patient’s stepdaughter.
A barbecue at their boss O’Neil’s place is interrupted by a call at a warehouse on the pier that is a deathtrap, and currently on fire. Webb falls into the water, and seems to be surrounded by a web-like thing, which is probably important given the title of the film. Parker revives her. She then has a premonition of O’Neil’s death and tries to convince him to let her drive, but he dismisses her concerns as ridiculous, especially given what she’s been through. A few minutes later, he dies just the way she saw in her vision.
We see Sims, now much older, who has precognitive abilities of his own. He’s seduced and killed an NSA agent and gotten his hands on her password, enabling him to use the agency’s brand-new technology that enables them to listen in on phone calls and see traffic cams and such. (How the password continues to work after the agent’s death, when it would be discontinued, is left as an exercise for the viewer.) He explains to the hacker he’s hired, Amaria, that he’s had a premonition of being killed by three spider-powered women in the future. He wants to kill them now before their powers are activated, and has provided descriptions of all three to Amaria.
Webb goes to the baby shower for Parker’s sister-in-law Mary. Mary’s husband Richard is away for work (apparently something in intelligence). Webb once again gets flashes of what will happen before it happens.
She’s given some time off to recover from her trauma as well as the trauma of O’Neil’s death. She arrives at Grand Central Terminal to head out of town, but then sees three teenagers on the train being assaulted. She manages to get them to safety, though the person attacking them—Sims, wearing a very Spider-Man-like outfit—does attack several cops. Webb steals a taxi and drives out of town, leaving the girls in a forest and telling them to stay put, promising to return.
The girls—Mattie Franklin (the one who gave Webb the finger earlier), Julia Cornwall (the stepdaughter from earlier), and Anya Corazon—are not sure they can trust this woman, though she did save their lives. They wind up going to a local diner so they can at least get something to eat.
Webb finds her mother’s old notes and sees a picture of Sims, whom she recognizes from her visions. She returns to the forest, and doesn’t see the girls, but does have a vision of them being killed in a diner by Sims.
A diner patron recognizes the girls from the news and calls 911. Sims has Amaria intercept the police frequency and he fakes a responding officer who says the girls aren’t at the diner. Then he heads there to kill them, but Webb drives the cab through the diner wall to stop him.
Leaving the girls with Parker, she travels to Peru to track down Las Arañas. Their leader, Santiago, provides her with a vision of her mother visiting her OB/GYN. To Webb’s shock, Constance wasn’t seeking out the spider for fame and money. Genetic testing had revealed that Webb would be born with myasthenia gravis. (How genetic testing revealed an auto-immune disorder is also left as an exercise for the viewer.) While the spider-bite applied to Constance didn’t save her, it did cure her daughter of that disease, at least.
Santiago also tells her that if you accept responsibility, the power will come. Which sounds vaguely familiar…
She returns to New York. Mary goes into labor, and so they all drive to the hospital, where they’re caught on a camera, revealing their location to Amaria. Sims ambushes them. Webb, who now has a better handle on her precognition, is able to get the Parkers to safety and keep the three girls safe.
They lead Sims to the warehouse by the pier where O’Neil was killed, setting traps for Sims along the way. Eventually, they are able to kill Sims, though not before Webb is hit with a dose of Sims’ neurotoxin (which he also used to kill the NSA agent) and she is blinded by burning debris.
Though she is now blind and wheelchair-bound, Webb promises to mentor the three girls. And they all live happily ever after. Or something.
“Hope the spiders were worth it, mom.”
Where the two Venom movies were cheesily and entertainingly ridiculous, and Morbius was incredibly dumb, Madame Web is just kind of—well, there. It’s got a pedestrian plot, a fairly standard script with dialogue that neither crackles nor is actively bad, acting that’s completely serviceable, special effects that are fine…
It’s the damning-with-faint-praise movie. It doesn’t have the atrocious performances and awful script of, say, Captain Battle: Legacy War, but that’s pretty much it as far as redeeming features go. Dakota Johnson plays a pretty standard plucky hero type, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor play your ordinary slightly snarky twenty-first-century teens, Adam Scott nicely inhabits the best friend role, and it’s all very, well, perfunctory. The only truly bad (as opposed to boring) performance is by Tahar Rahim, who creates no impression whatsoever as the bad guy…
Where the movie actually suffers, as opposed to just coasting along, is that it’s going out of its way to avoid having old-person cooties in it—which is hilarious in a movie about a character who is mostly known as an elderly blind paraplegic woman. The timeline is bounced back to 2003 so everyone can be nice and young. Except that by giving us Cornwall, Franklin, and Corazon before they’re super-powered, it takes the fun out of seeing them in action (aside from the occasional precognitive vision, anyhow, where they look like Arachne, Araña, and Spider-Woman).
Ultimately, it feels like an unnecessary prelude. The notion of Madame Web guiding a team of young spider-powered women in their lives as superheroes sounds a lot more compelling than this rote action movie is. It’s the same oversight made by My Name is Modesty, mistaking moderately interesting backstory for compelling frontstory.
Next week, we get another blast from the past, as we look at the pilot movie for the TV series Night Man from 1997, based on the Malibu Comic.
