Madame Web: One of the Worst Movies of the Year

If you ever wanted a crash course in how not to make a superhero movie, Madame Web is here to teach you. Unfortunately, it’s a class no one asked for. This movie feels like a baffling, passionless product from start to finish, and watching it unfold is an exercise in patience.

Let's start with the cast. Dakota Johnson tries her best as Cassandra Webb, but she’s completely underserved by the limp script. Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor are similarly wasted, playing would-be Spider-Women who spend most of the film doing nothing of consequence. Adam Scott as Ben Parker is the sole bright spot — he’s charming and feels grounded in a film that is otherwise wildly disconnected from reality.

The editing is jarring, the soundtrack is uninspired, and the dialogue... my god, the dialogue. Lines like "Don't do anything dumb" and "When you take on the responsibility, great power will come" are laughable in the worst way possible. It’s as if the writers read Spider-Man quotes on Wikipedia and decided to write a movie based solely on that knowledge.

The villain, Ezekiel Sims, is a special kind of bad. He’s one of the most forgettable, uncharismatic, and lazily written antagonists ever seen in a superhero movie. He’s the type of villain who monologues badly and shows up in poorly dubbed action scenes. It’s almost impressive how much they fumbled here.

Adding insult to injury, Madame Web desperately tries to shoehorn connections to Peter Parker and Spider-Man lore. Instead of feeling organic or exciting, these moments feel desperate — a sad attempt to remind audiences that better movies exist in the same universe.

In the end, Madame Web isn't even "so bad it's good." It's just bad. Soulless. Forgettable. And worst of all, boring. Sony, please — stop trying to make the Spider-Verse happen. It's not going to happen.