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- Madame Web Is Too Boring to Be So Bad It’s Good
- Madame Web Is Too Expensive to Be So Bad It’s Good
Madame Web was a much-talked-about movie at the start of 2024, but not for any positive reasons. Sony Pictures’ latest attempt to make a Spider-Man spin-off movie about one of his supporting characters without him had been widely mocked before its release due to the fact that the movie seemed to drastically rework the main character beyond recognition to the much-mocked trailer that featured the infamous “he was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders just before she died” line that was mocked by John Mulaney at the 96th Academy Awards just a month later.
When the movie finally came out, it was a box office bomb and panned by critics. It was so bad that the stars distanced themselves from it early on, with Sydney Sweeney even mocking the film’s performance just a month later on Saturday Night Live. Yet, as with many such films, Madame Web has done well on streaming. It is cheaper to stream a movie on Netflix than to go to a movie theater, and even if one has heard terrible things about the movie, not many people are willing to commit the price to go out to a theater and watch a movie ironically. With Madame Web now getting wider exposure from more viewers, it now asks if the movie is so bad it’s good or just bad.
Madame Web Is BAD
Madame Web
1/5
- Release Date
- February 14, 2024
- Runtime
- 1hr 57min
Let’s get it right out of the way: Madame Web is bad. Very bad. There have been plenty of times when a movie, particularly a superhero movie, was not widely received and gained critical reappraisal. Ang Lee’s Hulk was widely hated upon its release, but now it is considered a bold artistic vision in a genre that often seems afraid to let directors leave their mark. Fans were upset about The Mandarin twist in Iron Man 3. They labeled it as terrible, but as the years went on and with the benefit of hindsight, the movie is now a beloved entry in the MCU.
Even Spider-Man 3, a movie so widely mocked and hated by comic book fans at the time of its release, has recently been reclaimed thanks to the “Bully Maguire” meme and with the realization that even though it isn’t Spider-Man 2 that Sam Raimi knows how to make a superhero movie. All three of these are examples of movies that were widely dismissed by fans at the time but have since gone on to be reclaimed.
Madame Web is not one of those movies. First, the three movies mentioned above got mixed to positive critical reactions at the time of their release, so it was more vocal comic book fans that were upset with them. Madame Web was dismissed by critics and general audiences alike. Not every bad superhero movie was a misunderstood gem. There is a reason there have been no cultural reappraisals of films like Green Lantern, Elektra, Catwoman, or Fant4stic. Sometimes, a bad movie is just a bad movie.
This isn’t just reserved for superhero movies. While there certainly are cases of movies getting mixed reactions from critics and audiences becoming cult hits, there are also just as many cases of a movie that was bad on release, keeping that perception. Madame Web is not going to be the next Speed Racer, but instead, it will be more like the next Rollerball or The Master in Disguise Are.
Madame Web Is Too Boring to Be So Bad It’s Good
A lot of what can make a movie so bad it’s good is there is something interesting going on within the movie. A good example of this is Batman & Robin. It certainly has its faults, but it is hard to argue that the colorful toy-mandated aesthetics, campy, over-the-top performance, and baffling creative decisions don’t make for a moderately entertaining viewing experience. Even Wonder Woman 1984, a controversial movie, is not the safe studio pick, but it is full of big, bold creative choices by director Patty Jenkins. One might not like them, but it is still a director’s vision, which makes the movie a fascinating piece to examine.
Madame Web does not have that. The movie is so dull in terms of visual language and performance that there is nothing to latch onto. The only real interesting element of the movie is just how bad the film Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR) is. Yet those major audio flubs don’t truly make the act of watching the movie itself entertaining, just more frustrating as they highlight everything else wrong with the movie. The story itself isn’t good to begin with, so they attempted to fix it in post-production and just failed.
Is Sony’s Madame Web a Box Office Success?
Madame Web’s budget is lower than most superhero movies, so can the movie be considered a hit, or is it a bigger flop than people know?
The studio notes crushed any potential this movie could have had. Madame Web is directed by S.J. Clarkson, an accomplished television director who has helmed some of the best television series, including Succession, Jessica Jones, and Orange is the New Black. She is clearly a talented filmmaker, but none of Madame Web seems like her movie and, instead, the work of a studio that didn’t trust the filmmaker and only made the movie as part of a corporate mandate to expand the Spider-Man franchise by any means necessary, wasting the talented creatives involved and the audiences time.
Madame Web Is Too Expensive to Be So Bad It’s Good
One element that has made movies like The Room or Birdemic: Shock and Terror so entertaining to watch is they are bad films, but they are movies whose ambition overreaches their budget. Both are movies made outside the studio system that try to play like a standard Hollywood movie and fail spectacularly. Yet something amusing about them is the fact that they didn’t realize how much of a mess they were making. These films were obviously limited by their budget, which can make some baffling creative decisions, which in turn can make the act of watching them slightly more entertaining.
What Makes a Movie So Bad It’s Good?
What makes the difference between a movie being so bad, it’s good, and so bad, it’s just bad?
Laughing at a cheap and bad movie has been a time-honored tradition, one that was perfectly encapsulated in the hit television show Mystery Science Theater 3000. One thing almost all the movies had in common was they were all cheap, low-budget films that were partially crummy due to budget but also misguided attempts at copying more popular movies. Madame Web certainly is a misguided attempt at copying more popular films, but it does so on a major studio budget, which means it is expensive and wasteful.
Unlike the previously mentioned films, which are bad on a limited budget, Madame Web is a big-budget film made by a major studio with their full support behind it. They have big-name stars and are using a character connected to one of the biggest intellectual properties on the planet. Despite all of this money and potential, the movie turned out so bland and not very good that it feels like a waste of time and money for everyone. This had every resource at its disposal, and it failed to capitalize on it.
Was the cast of Madame Web tricked into thinking it was an MCU film? Check out our deep dive below into the star’s conflicting statements.
