Movie Reaction: Madame Web

Formula: Spider-Man (2002) - Spider-Man (the character)

The thing about Madame Web is that it's kind of fun. It's not successful at what it's doing. It has oodles or squandered potential. It makes baffling decisions that surely stemmed from Sony not understanding what the movie is. But, it's kind of fun. I hate using phrases like "so bad it's good", so I'll say that most movies that get as much wrong as it does are not nearly as watchable.

This movie is a prequel to a movie that will never be made in an extended universe that doesn't really exist. Dakota Johnson plays Cassie, a FDNY ambulance worker. She's an orphan who lost her mom in childbirth while hunting a rare spider in Peru. After a near-death experience, Cassie starts seeing visions of the future which leads her to saving three teens played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor from a many with superpowers who is trying to kill them. There's a whole reason and it actually ties to Cassie's mother 30 years ago. I'd get into the details, but that would pressure me into making an "intricate web" pun.

A lot of the reasons why this movie is getting so panned or mocked is how entirely unsubtle it is about everything. Cassie is a co-worker and friend of Ben Parker (Adam Scott) who is about to be an uncle. The movie is set in 2003, maybe 15 or 16 years before Captain America: Civil War. At one point a character references a connection between having power and responsibility. If you don't see all the things I'm hinting at, then congratulations tuning out the last 20 years of Marvel movies. Even the dialogue that does directly relate to a certain webslinger is so obvious that I can't tell if they were actively trying for camp in the movie.

It's interesting the movie is set in 2003, because it really would fit better had it been made in 2003. It's from that era of superhero movies. You know, the age when the X-Men weren't allowed to wear their traditional costumes because execs were afraid of scaring off all the normal people. The time when directors like Sam Rami and Ang Lee got to experiment with styles to literalize the comic book feel. Madame Web was made to be in theaters at the same time as Daredevil. Frankly, all of those movies had some groaner comic book references like Madame Web, but it was before 20 years of inundation to the point where even casual movie-goers can pick up on them. 

Had Madame Web leaned completely into that, it would've been great. Watching a movie that they made pretending it was 2003. The problem is, it's made by 2024 studio executives with 2024 intentions. So, Madame Web is made like a first installment. It prepares an audience for a lot of really cool things to come. It does this because every superhero movie has to be a launchpad for an extended universe. It used to be that a superhero movie was made as though they might not be able to make another. They'd get to all the best ideas right away. They are in costumes in a half hour. The marquee villain shows up. We get the big fight. Unfortunately, no one gets a costume in Madame Web except in visions of a cooler future. It takes half the movie for Cassie to begin to get a grasp on her powers. 

It's a shame, because you know what movie I'd really like to see? A movie where Dakota Johnson leads a team of Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor doing badass superhero stuff, delivering cheesy one-liners and not worrying about how it might affect a Spider-Man shared cinematic universe that can't really exist in the MCU anyway for contractual reasons. 

I love the cast though and it's competently made. Like, I see where the budget went. I hope some people find a way to enjoy it. If nothing else, I hope films like this and Morbius (which is so clearly worse than Madame Web) convince Sony to just think one movie at a time with these.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Argylle

Formula: Kingsman: The Secret Service – Stranger Than Fiction

Circa 2015, Matthew Vaughn had a strong case as covertly once of my favorite directors. Not knowing he was the same director for all of them, I really liked Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. They weren’t all even the same kind of movie except for his recurring genre subversion. Since he started revisiting the same ideas though, I’ve struggled to enjoy his movies much. Kingsman: The Golden Circle completely turned me off, like all his clever ideas on the spy movie topic were spent in the first Kingsman. Then The King’s Man, despite having a solid twist, felt like rehashing the same idea. Even still, the man pulls casts that I can’t turn down, which made me curious about Argylle. Despite not loving the last two Kingsman movies, my memory of all of them was of them being low aspiring, frenetic, and fun movies that don’t have a significant bar to clear in order to be good although hard to be great.

In that respect, Argylle is fine, I guess. He revisits the stylized spy genre again, this time with the story of a spy novelist (Bryce Dallas Howard) who finds herself in the middle of an actual spy story inspired by the events in her book. A real spy, Aidan (Sam Rockwell) saves her, reminiscent to Knight & Day. Others like Henry Cavill, John Cena, Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston, and even Dua Lipa show up along the way. If nothing else, Matthew Vaughn is excellent at gathering A-list talent.

The movie does deliver on the promise of comically over-the top action and a stylized world that simply can’t be real. Everyone is playing big characters. It’s a silly enough movie that it’s hard to get that worked up about it.

This is a hard movie to pull off. On a script level, it relies on establishing a very convoluted premise while still working in twists. It’s buckles under the challenge of it. The twists can be painfully obvious and the lengths the story has to go to get around them really hurt the pace and structure of the movie. It’s hard to get too deep into what I mean without spoiling some of the fun. Bryce Dallas Howard is a great example of the overall issue though. She has to play both a timid author and an action star at different points, and it’s never that clear how much of one or the other the movie needs her to be at many points. The end result is a performance that isn’t really able to work at either level.

Side Rant: I don’t know why this specifically bothered me so much, but for most of Howard’s biggest set pieces, they give her a blonde wig. I really disliked that. I’m not sure if it was the implication that she couldn’t be glamorous with her normal hair or just that it really didn’t look right on her.

Basically, Argylle could’ve been significantly more fun had it not been bogged down with so much plottiness and serving a twist that doesn’t really make it more interesting than revealing it right away. It’s a weird movie where my audience seemed receptive to it as we left the theater (I heard several “I liked that”s or “That was pretty good”s), yet some of the biggest moments – like one that features a cover of a Snow Patrol song – I couldn’t hear a single person laughing.  Watchable, but missing the manic magic that Vaughn captured in Kick-Ass or the first Kingsman movie. It’s a shame too, because much of the cast was perfectly suited for the idea of the movie, and this could’ve been a really fun use of Bryce Dallas Howard in a rare actual leading role.

Oh, and despite all of the marketing, don’t expect Dua Lipa in more than a decent sized cameo role.