Madam Web: A Marvel Masterclass in Mediocrity

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Ever watched a movie so bad it makes you question how it was even made? That's exactly what happened when we subjected ourselves to Sony's latest Spider-Man Universe disaster, Madam Web. From the moment Dakota Johnson's paramedic character coldly dismisses a child thanking her for saving their mother, we knew we were in for a special kind of cinematic catastrophe.

The problems with this film run deeper than a spider's web. Every performance feels like it was delivered under duress, with talented actors like Sydney Sweeney appearing completely stripped of their natural abilities. Dakota Johnson delivers each line as if she's reading it for the first time, with comedic timing so poor it sabotages even the rare moments when the script manages a decent joke. Meanwhile, the villain suffers from dialogue that appears completely disconnected from his on-screen actions, suggesting extensive post-production fixes that failed spectacularly.

What makes Madam Web particularly disappointing isn't just that it's bad - it's that it lacks even the ambition to be memorably terrible. Unlike cult classics that fail with passion, this film feels created on autopilot, devoid of creative risks or distinctive vision. The plot holes are numerous and baffling: a clairvoyant villain who can't see an oncoming car, a protagonist who abandons the very people she's meant to protect, and timeline inconsistencies that make no logical sense. Add in the most heavy-handed Pepsi product placement we've seen in years, and you have a film that earns a solid zero out of five stars. Did you subject yourself to Madam Web? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, and don't forget to subscribe for more brutally honest movie reviews!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of
Movies Worth Seeing.
Addy, would you care to ask mewhy I'm wearing this stupid hat?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Why are you wearing the stupid hat?
Because it doesn't f***ingmatter.
Just like f***ing, madam WebD'ah.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
We are talking about Madam Web.
Uh, why are we talking about it?
I don't know.
I just thought to myself what'sa movie that's definitely not
worth seeing.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
You're not living up to the name of your podcast.
Movies worth seeing Not, madamWeb.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Every bit of dialogue in this is delivered like a
robot, delivered it Like a chatGBT conversation delivered it.
There's no variation intonality or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
There are so many parts in these movies where they
could have used the horrible,horrible, horrible quality of
acting, story, script, structure, of every f***ing visual thing
you can imagine to make it aniconic terrible movie such as
shark night or something that'sintentionally bad.
But the problem is that theytake themselves so freaking

(01:14):
serious is what makes it so bad.
You gotta go for one the other.
You either take yourselfserious and you make something
good, or you take yourself notserious at all and you produce
something bad.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
But how do you get taken seriously when you can
tell they're trying to be funnybut they're failing at it badly
because the actors have terribledelivery.
Dakota johnson has the worstsense of comedic timing, so even
when a line is funny, shedestroys it.

(01:45):
This is an empty vessel whereeveryone feels like they are
performing this movie as if theywere held at gunpoint and they
just got to get it over with forthe sake of it.
Like sydney, sweeney is terribleand she's an amazing actress
yeah, so I don't know what theydid to her to like you see
little glimmers where you cantell there's something there,

(02:08):
but I don't know how it requiresa special talent to be able to
suck all the talent out of otherpeople.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I'm so sorry.
Yes, you should be so sorry.
Let's talk about a few momentsand storylines and why they're
justified or not justified atall.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Oh yeah, I got a great one.
Imagine you're watchingTerminator 2, right, and the
Terminator has just saved JohnConnor from the T-1000, who you
can tell is a threat.
Now imagine the Terminatorsaved John Connor in Terminator
2 and then decided hey, john,I'm going to go to Peru for a

(02:47):
week.
You stay here and deal with theT-1000.
See ya, that's what this moviedoes.
At one point, like the maincharacter, who now realizes the
stakes although they're prettymuch non-existent just decides
to leave these three girls thatshe's meant to be protecting
existent, just decides to leavethese three girls that she's

(03:07):
meant to be protecting.
And I think that's the otherproblem.
Is that spider dude, whateverthe f**k this guy's name was, I
don't even remember because he'sso generic.
In fact, he's so generic thatI'm pretty sure they just adr'd
and added everything like a chatgbt voice to his dialogue.
I don't know if, like, theymust have got the actor based on

(03:28):
his looks and didn't hearanything he said.
And then they got him in a roomand he was like Hi guys, I'm
here for Madam Web.
And they were like, oh shit,but we already signed off on
this.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Let's shoot everything.
Then get him some voicetraining and record his voice.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Later We'll fix it in post and what you get is
obvious dialogue that's beenrecorded at a separate time and
then added in post.
I'm gonna sit back and let ithappen.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
I will find them and kill them first his voice didn't
match his lips, it didn't matchthe movements, it didn't match
the surrounding, the room, thespace, the time, it didn't match
the emotions, it didn't matchanything.
It just sounded like an overlay, what it obviously was.
95% of all the films are 80-odd.

(04:20):
Yeah, it's a normal thing.
It's a normal thing.
It's just that, for example,example, wolf ring right in I
was about to say hugh jackman,you see like there's a footage
from behind the screens.
With him, he's like cool,that's all filmed, how he did it
, that he's gonna reenacteverything.
But then within, like thissmall, confined, soundproof
studio, and right, yeah, and hedoes that.

(04:44):
And it's amazing because thenwhen they edited it back into
the movie, it sounds like theoriginal sound from the clip.
Here it's like this guy isrunning off the clips, off the
clips, and he's jumping andrunning off the walls and he
gets hit by a truck and hisvoice is like my voice is still
like this.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Another thing that I was just thinking about the main
character's arc.
You can tell what it is in thefirst like five seconds of
meeting her because theybludgeon you over the head with
it.
She hates people.
Why is she a paramedic thatsaves people if she hates people
?
She like saves someone and thenone of the kids of the patient

(05:27):
comes up to her with a drawing,like thank you for saving my mom
.
And she's like yeah, you cankeep that number one.
I'm just like what a horribleperson.
Number two how am I gonna likethis character or resonate with
her at all?
it doesn't give you the theopportunity to like her and then
feel bad for her and wantingher to grow you just feel like

(05:49):
she's in the first gear thewhole movie of I just hate you
guys, but like I gotta protectyou.
Well, why do you gotta protectthem?
You don't have to protect themif you don't give a about them
yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Why doesn't she like?
Why doesn't she like people?
Why does she hate her mom?
Is it just because her mom gavebirth to her in the Amazon?
Is that why that's a good?

Speaker 1 (06:11):
point.
They don't explain that.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, she hates her mom for no reason and that makes
her just like a patheticcharacter.
Because why does she hate hermom?
Yeah, oh, my mom, yeah, my mom.
I blame my mom for dying.
That's what it is.
She blames her mom for dyingand the mom only died because
she was in Amazon.
And like, why is she so stupidthat she went to the Amazon
while being high pregnant, um,in the last stages of pregnancy,

(06:34):
and that's why she died.
Because she gave birth to me ina place where there was no
paramedic.
And that's why now I'm aparamedic, so that I can help
people.
And she's like I don't care.
I don't care, I don't care, Ijust don't care.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
One of the tropes that I really hate in movies is
when you have, like thisunstoppable force who's chasing
down people, like, for example,in a horror movie or, like I
said, the Terminator, the T-1000.
But in this there's so manyopportunities where the villain
could kill these three girlsthat Madam Web is protecting and

(07:13):
you say to yourself, like, whydoesn't he?
You almost want him to justkill them to end the stupid
movie.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Here comes a little list of things that I hate about
the villain right.
First of all, how old is DakotaJohnson?
Early 30s, yeah, I mean, it'sbeen 30 years since, uh, the
flashback to today.
He didn't age at all and I waslike, okay, okay, no problem if
he didn't age at all, that, thatthat could be, maybe because

(07:42):
the spider venom it gives him,like uh, superpowers, maybe he
stays young forever, but that inhis visions of how he's gonna
die in, let's say, eight yearsfrom now, he is gray how does
that happen?

Speaker 1 (07:55):
what do you mean?
He did age.
He had a couple of gray hairs acouple of yes, he didn't.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
He did not even have those gray hairs that was the.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
That was CGI grey hair.
All the budget went to tryingto make him look old, instead of
writing an actual freakingscript.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
So bad and then right .
So he has the superpower, hehas the vision, he has the
vision of the future, of howhe's going to die, but he
doesn't have the vision thathe's going to be hit by a car in
five minutes from now.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Not once, but twice.
Let's go to the interesting bitnow.
Michael, In a rating betweenminus five to five, what rating
would you?

Speaker 1 (08:35):
give this.
This is a full on zero.
I would happily watch SamuraiCop or the Room or Birdemic.
There's a lot of reallyterrible films that I'd much
rather watch than this, becauseat least there's like some kind
of boldness of doing something,whereas this is just the most

(08:57):
autopilot movie I've ever seenin my life.
None of the actors have anysoul or energy or anything in it
.
The story has nothing exciting.
There's barely any action.
Most of the action happens inflashbacks and they're
meaningless.
If they made a doco about howthis movie got made, that would

(09:20):
be more interesting to me thanwatching the actual movie,
because I'd be like how just somany high-profile executives
like with a company like Sonyand after Morbius bombed, how do
they say we're gonna do theexact same thing again?

Speaker 2 (09:38):
I would give it a 5 out of 5, just joking.
0 out of 5.
If I could lower, I'd be goinglower.
I can't say a single good thingabout this movie.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Not a single good thing it doesn't even accentuate
like the best things about itscast or anything like that.
Yeah, we should also write inthe title of this podcast that
it's Madam Web, presented byPepsi Cola.
That was as obvious as anything.

(10:13):
I'm surprised there wasn't ascene in this where, like
someone was like dying, likethey're bleeding and Madam Web
doesn't just let me just get youa Pepsi Cola to satisfy your
thirst.
There you go, and then he'slike we've all that sugar and
energy.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
I'm back to normal.
That would be shameful.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
But you know what's not shameful?
Commenting below and likingthis video and subscribing for
more videos like this.
Did you see Madam Web and if so, what's one of your favorite
quotes from the movie?
Comment below and let us know.
Until then, this is us guysfrom Movies Worth Seeing.
You can check out the fullpodcast at Spotify and anywhere

(11:00):
else where there's podcasts.
Good day.