Step in the right direction
Mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent (David Corenswet) is secretly Superman (also Corenswet), and has been Supermanning for a few years now. While he’s universally beloved, he’s recently interfered in a border crisis that has raised political and diplomatic eyebrows, as well as providing the perfect opportunity for evil billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) to enact a nefarious plan. Good clean fun ensues.
Pete Linning thinks: Good clean fun is the name of the game here. I took my 12 year old nephew to see his first Superman movie, and I couldn’t be happier that this was his first exposure to the big guy. This movie takes Superman back to basics in a true deconstruction of the character, while fully embracing the sillier elements from the comics. I’d go so far as to say that this movie captures the feeling of jumping into a random comic more than any other – things are already happening, nothing is explained (because it doesn’t need to be), and everyone already knows each other.
The plot isn’t anything terribly complex, and doesn’t need to be. Lex is up to no good, and Superman and his mates need to stop him. What’s important is that they’ve nailed the tone of the characters, and the world they live in. David Corenswet brings warmth, kindness, and an incredibly human fallibility to his performance, playing wonderfully off of Rachel Brosnahan’s (slightly) more cynical Lois Lane, as well as the colourful cast of heroic weirdos that he knows. It’s Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor that steals the show with a pitch-perfect portrayal of a man as brilliant as he is petty, a bloke who could achieve so much more if he wasn’t blinded by childish envy.
Superman is a real breath of clean air for comic-book movies, and while in recent years we might have seen Superman doing good, it’s nice to see Superman doing well.
Elizabeth Best thinks: This is the most grounded a guy in a cape has felt in years. It’s hopeful without being corny, and somehow makes Superman feel like a real person you’d actually want to grab a coffee with—if he weren’t busy saving the planet, of course. The humor’s there, but it’s subtle and smart, not trying too hard, which is a nice change. You can tell Gunn actually gets the character—this isn’t about making him cool, it’s about reminding us why he mattered in the first place. Nick Hoult brings a sharp, unsettling calm to Lex Luthor that we haven’t seen in ages. He’s not just a villain, he’s a ticking time bomb wrapped in a tailored suit. Gunn’s Superman is a fresh take that still feels classic, and yeah, it works.
Brave but hardly new
After a near-death experience, New York paramedic Cassie Webb starts developing clairvoyant powers that work basically the same as that Nicolas Cage movie Next. She soon finds herself protecting three 25-year-old teenagers from a poorly-dubbed villain for poorly-defined reasons. Despite the deliberately ambiguous marketing, this is a Sony “we’ve got the rights to Spider-man’s villains” movie, not an MCU movie.
Anthony Sherratt thinks: There are some fun moments in Madame Web; some very good acting, a fun subtle background subplot, and some genuine tension. Editor’s Note: No, it doesn’t.
Unfortunately, it also has abysmal villain dialogue and some woeful exposition. Seriously, when your spider movie jumps straight to ‘this spider’s bite will grant superpowers’ in the first few minutes of the movie, you don’t understand show-don’t-tell. Or pacing.
The bad guy could have been fun but only acts and speaks in cliches. That’s when you can understand him anyway. It feels like he’s been dubbed as there’s constantly something wrong with both sound levels and words not always matching his lips.
Dakota Johnson does a great job as the troubled but likeable lead and has great chemistry with Adam Scott who plays Ben Parker. The cast does their part but the script is a bit loose and fast. Still, it’s mindless fun; it’s just a shame there’s a bit more emphasis on the mindless.
5/10
Peter Linning thinks: Producers of the Bob Marley biopic take note – If you’re going to make a bad movie, at least have the decency to make it so fucking bad that it’s entertaining. The entire movie feels like someone was given the audio and video for a movie, and then told to assemble it into a completely different movie. Madame Web is almost overwhelming in its shittiness and I genuinely cannot wait to see it again.
From the very first minute of the movie we’re barraged with expository dialogue, crappy CGI, and sound editing so bad that it’s actually bizarre – I’ve never identified more ADR in a movie, and I’m sure I didn’t catch it all. Almost all of the villain’s lines are blatantly dubbed, and probably a quarter of all the movie’s dialogue comes from a character who is off-screen or whose back is turned in an attempt to explain why the characters are doing whatever it is they’re doing. The movie’s attempts at dynamic editing are liable to give you a headache, and if that doesn’t do it then the overuse of Dutch angles and post-processing zooms might do the trick.
The supporting actors are doing what they can with a dud script, but Dakota Johnson is fucking atrocious in the lead role, alternating between a flat monotone and a completely insane off-kilter delivery that doesn’t seem to match the context of the scene at all. It’s not even that she’s phoning it in (which would still be unacceptable), it’s that her performance is so alien that it’s hard to believe that there were takes worse than the ones used in the film.
The movie looks bad, sounds worse, and has a terrible plot that only gets worse the longer you think about it. There are so many unique elements in the movie that don’t make any sense, that trying to break them down would essentially just be a retelling of the events of the movie.
I’m not a huge believer in “so bad they’re good” movies, but Madame Web is so bad it’s fascinating. Get some friends together and watch it as soon as you can see it without paying money.
1/10
Marvel-ous? Or will you be (Nick) Fury-ous?
Okay Barry, now run back in time and fix the other movies
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Music, slow-mos, quips and Quill. Is the new Guardians film hip to the max or just another remix?
Helen Mirren must need a new pool house
Do you want ants? Because that’s how you get ants.
