Madame Web Reviews Skewer Sony's Marvel "Knock-Off"

Madame Web reviews may give Sony déjà-vu after Morbius.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Perhaps Sony saw the future. The studio behind Madame Web — in which Fifty Shades star Dakota Johnson plays a paramedic with the power of precognition — released the movie's review embargo Tuesday morning, just hours before the first afternoon showings of the Marvel-based standalone origin story. Directed by SJ Clarkson (Jessica Jones), what critics are calling the worst Sony-Marvel movie since the similarly-reviewed Morbius also features the big-screen debuts of future Spider-Women Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor), and Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced). 

Madame Web debuted to mostly negative responses on Rotten Tomatoes and currently sits at 19% on the review aggregator. Only the Jared Leto-led vampire movie Morbius, set in Sony's Spider-Man Universe of spinoffs, received worse reception at 15%. 2018's Venom and 2021's Venom: Let There Be Carnage, starring Tom Hardy as the symbiote-clad lethal protector, fared slightly better with 30% and 57% approval from critics, respectively.

"While Madame Web might not contain the heart-pumping tension, massive franchise connections, or painfully authentic verisimilitude of many of its modern contemporaries, it makes a convincing argument that an entertaining-enough story can still be found outside of those traits," ComicBook critic Jenna Anderson writes in a 2.5/5 Madame Web review. " The charisma of its lead heroines and the specificity of its premise prevent it from being too boring, too goofy, or too irredeemable to ignore. For better or for worse, Madame Web further illustrates that Sony's Spider-Man Universe has potential when not trying to be a modern cinematic universe at all, and instead being a springboard for the most niche genre stories imaginable."

Here's what critics from around the web are saying about Madame Web:

Variety: "A hollow Sony-made Spider-Man spinoff with none of the charm you expect from even the most basic superhero movie ... Madame Web was never going to touch the relatively high-concept, Disney-made Avengers movies. The script is confusing, the action stale and the visual effects cheap. A recurring device that places Cassie at the center of what looks like a giant plasma ball, surrounded by static tendrils, is downright embarrassing. But guess what? Tickets still cost just as much as they would for a more canonical Marvel movie. So why settle for the knock-off?"

The Hollywood Reporter: "There's something so demoralizing about lambasting another underwhelming Marvel offering. What is there left to really say about the disappointments and ocean-floor-level expectations created by the mining of this intellectual property? Every year, studio executives dig up minor characters, dress them in a fog of hype and leave moviegoers to debate, defend or discard the finished product. Madame Web is one of these recently exhumed efforts." 

Inverse: "[Sony] is so determined to revive the specific kind of superhero B-movie you'd find buried in the Walmart dollar bin that it simply sets its latest film in 2003 (complete with laughably on-the-nose 2003 needle drops and shoehorned pop culture references about how Cassie really wants to go home to "watch Idol"). But Madame Web doesn't have the same early aughts go-for-broke charm as Venom does, nor does it have the self-awareness to even lampshade its particular brand of corniness. Madame Web is just about the worst movie you'd find at the bottom of that Walmart dollar bin — doomed to be forgotten as soon as it's seen."

IndieWire: "Dakota Johnson does her best to save a hilariously retrograde superhero movie that feels like it was made in 2003 ... From its lack of stakes to its absence of style, and from its laughable CGI to its palpable discomfort with the rhythms and tropes of its genre, Madame Web is a superhero movie that feels like it was made by and for people who have never seen a modern superhero movie."

RogerEbert.com: "Madame Web is not the unmitigated disaster that its clunky trailer or its calendar spot in February would suggest. It's a low-stakes superhero origin story with a thoroughly amusing Dakota Johnson performance at its center ... within these oversaturated times for comic book movies, Madame Web is blissfully breezy in its pacing, which helps make it a more enjoyable watch than some of the super-serious, end-of-the-world fare we often see."

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Rolling Stone: "It is the Cats: The Movie of superhero movies. Not a single decision seems of sound mind. Not a single performance feels in sync with the material." 

Madame Web is in theaters Feb. 13.

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