The beauty of low expectations is that you should be able to exceed them — or, at least, match them.
“Madame Web,” the Sony-Marvel (and thus Disney adjacent) superhero film already had rock bottom expectations going into its Wednesday release.
By virtually any forecast or prediction, “Madame Web” was tracking to be a historically bad box office flop on a number of levels.
Not only was it tracking to be the worst debut in the history of Sony’s Spider-Man movies (Spider-Man, mind you, is one of the biggest and most popular superheroes in the world), it was also tracking to be the worst of any Sony-Marvel joint project.
It was also tracking to be one of the worst box office debuts of any Marvel film, with some projections seeing low numbers not seen since the Marvel Cinematic Universe was still just a theory.
The one potential salve for these poor projections would’ve been positive reviews and strong word-of-mouth.
As you can surely surmise by now, neither of those came to fruition.
On the review front… You know what? I’ll just let the reviews speak for themselves.
IGN called the movie “a waste of talent” that was “a confusing, yet ultimately bland result.” Worse yet, for IGN, this movie wasn’t even good enough to be the beginning of something better.
Do you still go see movies in theaters often?
“It fails as a one-off and a franchise starter,” IGN’s review, which gave the movie a five-out-of-10 score, stated.
The Guardian called the film a “tangled mess” and only scored it one star out of five.
Even the notoriously left-leaning Rolling Stone magazine had this to say about the movie: “‘Madame Web’ Isn’t As Bad As You’ve Heard. It’s So Much Worse.”
Currently, the film is sitting at a rancid 17 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Even the discourse surrounding the film online has honed in on some shoddy camera work and editing.
The awkward cut makes it look like Dakota Johnson is rushing to the car to save Dakota Johnson who’s already in the car. #MadameWeb pic.twitter.com/xag2dHH74s
— Jay Thomas (@GroundhogJay_) February 13, 2024
“The awkward cut makes it look like Dakota Johnson is rushing to the car to save Dakota Johnson who’s already in the car,” one viral X post pointed out.
So the movie is a bland, convoluted mess, it’s poorly edited… Could the villain at least be a little funny or interesting?
Apparently not, according to those same scathing reviews.
Does knowing the future save you from it?
Tahar Rahim is Ezekiel Sims in #MadameWeb – exclusively in movie theaters February 14. Get tickets. https://t.co/N06mxM6b7I pic.twitter.com/gQaatFcQah
— Madame Web (@MadameWeb) January 31, 2024
The worst part of it all is that neither Sony, Marvel nor Disney appear to have any qualms about trying to squeeze more blood out of this Spider-Man shaped stone.
“Madame Web” comes out on Valentine’s Day 2024, but in just another six months or so, yet another Spider-Man-less Spider-Man movie, “Kraven the Hunter” releases Aug. 30, 2024.
