Madame Web Director on Ezekiel Sims’ Expanded Backstory (Exclusive)

Madame Web essentially functions much like a Marvel-themed Terminator movie: an unstoppable killer pursues a target critical to some pivotal future event, while the intended victim(s) gets help from an unlikely savior.The “unstoppable killer” that Madame Web and her cohorts must escape is none other than Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim).

In Madame Web’s story (SPOILERS), Sims is shown to be an explorer working alongside Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé) in the Amazon jungle. When Constance discovers a reclusive spider-worshipping tribe in the jungle, Sims betrays her and takes the power of the tribe’s spider-totem for himself, leaving the pregnant Constance for dead. Years later, Sims has a clairvoyant vision of other people with the powers of the spider rising to destroy him and sets out to change his own dark fate, while dressed as an ‘evil” version of Spider-Man, complete with a dark-colored spider-suit. 

When ComicBook’s Phaze Zero spoke with Madame Web director S.J. Clarkson, she revealed that there was a lot of discussion about how much attention Ezekiel SIms actually needed in the film: 

“You want to give as much time as you can, but also I want the movie to be streamlined and feel like it’s agile and keep propelling you forward, that there’s a propulsion to it that I really wanted,” Clarkson explained. “And I felt that Tahar and I talked about it quite a lot, about how much we can get in, how much we can see of it…”

The director and star apparently wrestled with the idea of fleshing-out more of Ezekiel’s backstory through flashbacks, but Clarkson quickly discovered that keeping flashbacks and visions of possible futures all straight, visually, was too much: we had ideas of how we might… have flashbacks for him, but I’m like, ‘Hang on, hang on, hang on. We’ve got clairvoyance and he’s got a nightmare, and if I start doing flashbacks, what am I going to do for the flashbacks? This is a whole thing going on.’”

Between keeping Madame Web “propelling forward” with the pace of a Terminator flick, and not confusing the audience visually, there was little way to go in terms of creating a deeper backstory or character for Ezekiel Sims. In the end, we got an introductory scene of heavy exposition from the villain (the most he ever articulates), as he kills his lover in bed to steal her… NSA tech (yep). 

And then it felt like it was going to be a scene of dialogue describing it more, and I was like, I felt that Tahar is so strong as an actor, his conviction in the performance and the psychology of his kind of wrestle with Ezekiel and needing to survive, I felt that was just so potent and sort of evident that it didn’t need it. I mean, he carries so much of that by the depth of what he brings to the screen. So could I have spent more time on him? Without doubt, I could have spent more time on all of them. But you’re trying to cherry pick the best bits to make it the best ride possible so that everyone can go on the journey, enjoy the movie and the narrative for what this narrative is, and then allow time for other things later on, maybe.