Madame Web transcript
Season 1 · Episode 3. Generated automatically, so expect the odd misheard word.
Hello and welcome to the Worst Movie Podcast. I'm Ade.
And I'm Aaron and this is a podcast where we watch some really bad movies and hopefully find something good in them.
Yeah, we're going to try to find some of the most well-known and also poorly reviewed movies and talk about them. And Aaron, who are we to talk about these movies? can you give the audience a little bit of our background and credentials?
We are nobodies. You shouldn't listen to us, but we're going to talk anyway. We have no credentials, no background in film. We just like to watch movies and talk about them.
no podcasting experience. This may be the worst movie podcast in more ways than one. Please bear with us and enjoy.
That too.
haha
we are deep into September and our theme for this month, we're going to try to have a different theme every month. Our theme for this month is Modern Messes. So we're covering some of the most notorious flops of the past few years. And today we're going to talk about Madam Web, released in 2024.
directed by S.J. Clarkson and starring Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabella Merced and streaming on Netflix. Aaron, can you give us a quick synopsis of what this movie is about?
can, a force to confront her past, Cassandra Webb, a Manhattan paramedic that may have clairvoyant abilities, forms a relationship with three young women destined for powerful futures if they can survive their threatening present.
Yes. So this movie has a 10 % on Rotten Tomatoes, a one and a half on Letterboxd and made a hundred million dollars in the worldwide box office. couldn't find the budget numbers, but ⁓ yeah, this was definitely a flop and very, if you recall, really just savage on late night on social media and
so many ways. Have you watched this before, Aaron? What did you know about this movie going into it?
I hadn't seen it before. I knew about it because it was such a famous flop. Yeah, it was similar to Morbius where I knew of the Sony Marvel Spider-Man universe, but I wasn't that familiar with this character. And by the time these came out, the reviews were already so bad that it was like, I'll wait till it's free, quote unquote.
Yeah.
Yeah, I should say too, didn't really know. When we were putting together the list of what movies to cover this month, we didn't intend for it to be Sony Marvel character flop month. So unintentionally put these movies back to back, but it kind of worked out well because it's kind of a nice comparison. Did you know they both had the same writers? So this had the same writers as Morbius? Yeah.
I didn't know that until
afterwards, but it doesn't surprise me.
Yeah. ⁓ and I guess, you know, they came out of the same strategy, as you alluded to in terms of the Sony universe and, yeah, I didn't know anything about the character, madam web before this movie. don't the three, the three, ⁓ I forget how you put it in the synopsis, but do you know who their characters are or become? Yeah.
Same.
No.
In fact, I'm not even sure I remember all of their names.
I don't, have him now. Sydney Sweeney.
You
We promised
you the worst movie podcast. And that's what you're going to get.
Yeah.
Yeah. the three teenagers, which by the way, are all played by women in their mid to late twenties. but are supposed to be teenagers. The three teenagers are, yeah, Sydney Sweeney, math girl, and then skateboard girl are basically how I refer to them in my notes. Cause I'm sure their names are mentioned, but, yeah, I have no idea who, who they become.
Yeah.
to in terms of their superhero equivalent. Yeah, this is a doozy of a movie. We're going to bounce around a lot because there are a lot of scenes in this movie where nothing really happens. But yeah, nothing really. I mean, nothing really happens throughout the movie, I guess, but we'll try to cover it. So let's let's.
Yeah.
We start out the movie in 1973 in the Peruvian Amazon. what were your notes from this scene?
⁓ It starts out with a woman scientist heavily pregnant in the Peruvian forest in search of a spider. A very elusive breed of spider. I don't know what makes it special. They didn't say, really. ⁓
I
it's a comic book trope, but it is funny that both this and the movie we covered last time, Morbius, both all about these magical animals in the jungles of South America.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's very exotic. We don't know what's in the Amazon.
Yeah.
I guess not. All these animals getting ready to give us superpowers. Sorry, go ahead.
⁓ She's got this
strange assistant man with her that I just wrote seems sus. He just like a yeah, he's supposed to be her guide and protection through the rainforest, but he super creepy. she eventually finds the the spider she's looking for. And of course, these creepy suspicious assistant.
Yeah, security guy.
steals it from her and in the struggle shoots her and while she's bleeding out these strange natives come down from the canopy and whisk her away to this pool where they try to save her life but by having a spider bite her but she dies in childbirth and her daughter is born.
Yeah.
That
is, that's the backstory we get ⁓ for Cassandra.
Quite a scene.
What did you think of the jungle spider people?
I thought they were kind of cool actually. The effects were kind of silly, like the way that they were like, they were descending from the canopy by running upside down on the trees. And it was clearly just like wire work. ⁓ it didn't look that cool, but I thought that they're like, the way they looked was really cool. They had like almost Spider-Man suits on.
Really?
Yeah.
⁓ but like jungle versions of them. ⁓
I did not like them at all. As soon as they came on the screen,
I was like, Oh no, what is this? Their costume didn't make any sense. it wasn't like a skin tight, you know, leotard outfit type thing, but it, just had all this like stuff around them that I guess made them look like it was like spider webbing, but had no utility. was just.
You
Yeah.
And then the way it was shot, they kind of had the camera at an angle and like they kept like they showed the guy like bouncing back and forth. It just looks super cheesy to me. It looked like it was really budget special effects.
Yeah.
Yeah, their outfits would definitely get caught on everything in the jungle. It's not good jungle attire, but this is the business of bad movies and it doesn't have to make sense.
Yeah.
I was trying to come into this movie with an open mind. Like I do all, all the bad movies that we watched, like forgive some of the like junk sciencey stuff and you know, magical jungle animal stuff. Um, but yeah, uh, it was, it was a little, it was a little rough. so the movie jumps ahead to 2003 in New York city and we see, um,
our hero driving an ambulance with Adam Scott. Yeah.
I love Adam Scott.
I think he makes everything better.
He, he plays Ben Parker in this, which, I was so annoyed throughout the whole, like, I don't know if this is in their contract that they can't say Spider-Man because they never once, they talk about the spider people a lot from, from the jungle even in ways it was like awkward, like he turned it, did he turn into a spider person? Like they can't say man and spider and then they can't.
You
Yeah.
Yeah.
They can't use the word, the name Peter. Like, so this is 2003 and, and Ben Parker, who is uncle Ben. Yeah. And his, his sister's pregnant with Peter Parker and like, they just come short so many times. And it's, I don't, I don't know they're just trying to be like cutesy and like wink at the audience or whatever, but it just got annoying how many times they almost said Spider-Man or Peter Parker, but it fell short.
Isn't Ben the uncle? Yeah.
It was very
intentionally Spider-Man adjacent, but it was like Frank's Spider-Man costume from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. That's what it felt like.
bright.
Yeah, yeah. Or
like coming to America, the McDonald's, McDowell's sort of thing where they just, yeah, contractually couldn't say anything. Yeah. And so, yeah, so we get introduced to grownup. This was the baby that was saved by the spider people.
the fifth
It was off-brand Spider-Man.
Yeah, what notes do have about growing up Spider Girl?
⁓ She's a paramedic. Ben played by Adam Scott as her partner. And they're, I don't know. I thought that Adam Scott was really good. I think that they don't have any chemistry together though. And this is kind of a recurring thing, but I don't think that Dakota Johnson's character has chemistry with anybody in the movie really. She seems...
Yeah.
Yeah, she's kind of
a misanthrope
⁓
She kind of keeps everybody at arm's distance. She is a foster child, so maybe that's a part of her upbringing is that she doesn't let anybody in and she's kind of distant, but they don't specifically say that.
They don't really, and they don't really set her up to be a sympathetic character because one of the first scenes are they save as paramedics, they save somebody's life. And then like the, the, the woman's daughter, this little girl comes up to her and like gives her a picture and thanks her for saving her life. And she turns to Adam Scott and it's like, what do I do with this? And like, it's just really rude about, like she doesn't want to take the picture. So they're not even setting her up to be sympathetic in the movie.
No.
But yeah, it's a weird choice by the writers.
Yeah, and when she's at the hospital, we are introduced to Sydney Sweeney's character who is, so I guess it's the woman who was saved by Dakota Johnson. Her husband had a daughter from a previous relationship, which is Sydney Sweeney. And they're, so they're all in the hallway thanking the EMT and, and, they go in to see the woman in her room.
as she's recovering and the dad tells Sydney Sweeney to wait in the hall that it'd be better if she didn't come in. like he's excluding his daughter from from this traumatic thing. I don't know. I don't I didn't understand why he was excluding her even with the exposition of you know that it's a blended family and it's not really that well blended.
Well, I took it as, because they spend a lot of time later in the movie explaining why the three teenagers that are, that basically go missing and are missing for days on end, weeks actually, why their parents aren't looking for them So it's like all over explanation to have us believe, yeah, that somebody hates their step-daughter so much that our
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're unwanted kids. Basically.
comfortable with them being missing for a couple of weeks.
Yeah, we also see ⁓ the second of the teen girls is her downstairs neighbor who is being hassled by the landlord for money and is asking to talk to her dad and she's saying he's not here. So downstairs neighbor is the second teenager. She's apparently got no parental figures in her life and has money troubles.
Her dad was deported, she says later.
Yeah, her dad was deported and she's been on her own for six months So she is she has nobody to care for her So there's a crash scene where they're called to an accident and There's a car dangling over over the edge of a bridge with a man trapped inside and Cassandra and Ben go in to rescue him Ben and the
Man get out, but as they're rescuing him, the car falls over the edge with Cassandra still inside and into the water where she drowns to death. And she has these visions while she's dying of spider webs and things from the future that haven't happened yet. I don't know, this was her superpower awakening. And then
Ben revives her on the banks of the bridge or whatever, and he's taking her vitals and we get this time jump. This is our first time jump where she seems to relive the same moment twice. And she's confused. She's like, why are you taking my vitals for a second time? I've already done this. So something fishy is going on with her after this death experience.
Yeah, and I won't, I won't pick on this too much because I don't think we can actually make sense of it. It's, it's a comic book movie. You know, we, we shouldn't try to analyze too much of the whole, how did they get their powers thing? But they didn't really, I was trying to understand within the context of the movie, why this awakened her powers. Presumably she got her spider powers when she was a baby and was
bitten by the magical spider in the, Peru, right? But somehow the drowning activated it.
Yeah.
Maybe it's she was born in a pool and she was born again in the river maybe. It's the first time she's been revived in water since she was a baby, I guess. I don't know.
This is the first time she's been in water since she was a baby in 30 years.
Okay, yeah, maybe
paralleled her trauma from birth.
Yeah, maybe it was just a trauma response that it's the first time she's been in water like that, I guess, since she was a baby. I don't know.
Yeah, it didn't, it didn't make any sense. in parallel, we, we cut to a bunch of scenes with the villain of the movie, who is the security guy that killed, Dakota Johnson's mother. And he is also in New York city, you know, 30 years older.
I think we're introduced to him when he picks up this woman at the opera, right? Which, um, I mean, I've, I've only been to an opera once. uh, I assume though, it's not a great place to pick up women the way that he did. So, but, um, anyway, she, she's, uh, it was planned. learned because she's an NSA operative and he needs, uh, he needs to.
Yes.
He needs the NSA
surveillance state. He needs access.
Yeah, he needs a password.
Yeah, so he takes her back to his apartment, which has one of the... which has the spider he stole in a cage there. he's been hoarding it. Yeah. My notes on him that he is just that he has great hair. His hair is incredible. I don't know if it's fake or not. It looks like a wig. It's too perfect.
Yeah.
a beautiful terrarium.
Yeah
Speaking of fake his voice seemed fake. Did it seem that way to you?
Yeah, so I looked up about this. It's something called ADR, automated dialogue replacement, which is basically just recording the dialogue over again in a booth afterwards, because they're not. I mean, it could be anything. It could be they needed more exposition in a scene, or they weren't happy with the take, or the quality was bad. But I'm pretty sure that they did this to all of his dialogue.
Yeah.
Right.
the mouth doesn't match what you're hearing most of the time when he's talking and it felt like, it felt very weirdly, like campy like a foreign film. And I know he's a foreign actor, but I've watched other interviews with him and his voice isn't this weird. ⁓ It just sounds very strange.
Yeah, it seemed like,
and it's very even the, I don't know how to describe it, but it seems like everyone is talking normally and then you hear radio voice from this character. yeah, it's, it's very odd.
Yeah.
And it's so campy too, his dialogue, the lines are campy and then also the delivery is over the top like villain. ⁓ So it's camp right from the get go.
Yeah.
⁓ I did have a note there when, when he's killing the NSA lady with his, he, he can touch people and infect them with the spider venom. and she, and as she's dying slowly, she gives him her password, which is a string of random letters and numbers. And I'm like, why don't you write this down, dude? Like it's, it is a very strong password. I'm like the pie backwards password of Dr. Morbius.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This was a strong password and he didn't write it down. But anyway, he's the villain. I never really got down to his name, so I'll just say villain throughout. But villain has, yeah, that's right. He has these visions every night of these three women in Spider-Man-esque costumes who come to kill him in his apartment. And so...
Ezekiel.
He's basically setting up this, using the NSA surveillance tech to find who these people are. And he has a bunch of screens set up in his apartment and one employee who's, who's just working 24 seven. I really felt for her throughout the movie.
You
under the threat of
death too. He's threatened that if she doesn't find these girls, he will kill her.
Yeah, I mean, what job listing? I want to see that job listing. how much did you have to be paid to like, imagine showing up for a job interview and it's just somebody's apartment and you're like sitting in the living room with 10 to 12 screens. And it's like,
I need you
to hack the NSA and find these teenage girls for me. And if you don't, I'll kill you.
Yeah, I want you to just live here for two weeks watching
screens to see if you find these people. She also, yeah, she does. She is a hacker because at one point he asked her to, as he's swinging around in downtown New York, he asked her to hack the traffic lights and turn them all green. And she does that. But other than that, all she does, I think it's just watch, watch cameras.
Yeah.
She's the person in the chair for him.
Yeah,
so he basically set up for he's looking for these three teenagers who at some point in the future are going to kill him or at least I mean, that's what his dream says. And we get the train scene where Madame Web.
character is on a train and she sees these three girls one by one come onto the train and flashes of seeing Ezekiel kill each of them. So she tries to save them. Yeah. What, what are your notes on this scene?
So she had previous to this had another experience of premonitions where she saw her fire chief or somebody played by Mike Epps get into a car accident and die. she wasn't sure what was happening, but she tried to talk him out of it he didn't listen. And it happened and he died. And so she's starting to realize, these are actual real premonitions of something that's going to happen.
And so by the time she gets to the train scene, she's pretty sure that the things that she's seeing are really gonna happen. And she decides to help and she sees Ezekiel coming down the train just like her vision's predicted. And so she gets the girls up and they make a break for it. I don't know why they followed her. ⁓
Yeah.
She was just a crazy lady on the train that's like, is an emergency. You have to get off the train and follow me.
Well, she steals skateboard girls skateboarding, so she follows her because of that. ⁓ otherwise, yeah, it's not really clear.
Yeah, but the other two girls
are just along for the ride and and they don't know why they're following her. And they try to like say maybe we're being taken to the police so they don't know. But then they see the the Spider-Man, the the Man-Spider villain. Yeah, Man-Spider. The villain is like in his full
Ha!
Can't call him Spider-Man.
man-spider suit crawling on the ceiling after them and they see him but nobody else seems to see him. And so the girls realize that they're in danger and that that Madame Webb is not the threat. And so they make their getaway.
which, by the way, and I don't know why this bugs me so much. The quick change costume Ezekiel is first the villain. He's walking on the train in a full suit, but, but barefoot. Why is he barefoot? That's just gross. He's barefoot a lot in the movie, like a full suit and barefoot. then seconds later he's in his band spider costume. ⁓
Yeah. He's in a suit. Yeah.
I don't know, they don't explain.
Yeah. Yep.
And
his mask comes on and off in a split second. ⁓ It's just there and then it's gone in the next scene and then it's back. I don't know how it goes up and down.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's
one of his powers, I guess.
Yeah, I don't know why he has the suit like they don't explain really how he came to be man spider. I mean, we know that he presumably got bit by the spider, but who made the suit? Why does it? What does he do? Does he just kill people or like, what is his purpose?
What are his powers other than, like he has the power where he can infect you with venom if he touches you and he can crawl on the ceiling. Like, I guess we just kind of know he has vague spider powers.
Yeah, I'm guessing he's strong, but, ⁓
Yeah. And also to that point, they don't really, what has he been doing for 30 years? He's wealthy. He has this penthouse. I don't understand how those powers can grant you wealth.
Yeah.
Yeah, and the other thing is like. I'm presuming that he doesn't kill just for sport like just for fun, so his only. Purpose in this movie is to kill the three girls that he thinks are going to kill him. So did he build build the suit just for the purpose of killing the girls? Because is he going out in the suit other times in his life? Just just. Like does he do? Does he use this the powers for anything else in his life other than?
I think that's not explained. No.
tracking down these girls and he'll kill them.
Yeah, it's not, it's also not very, ⁓ consistent in this universe. what the magical spider grants you in terms of powers, because Madam Webb has these clairvoyant flashes and villain has them in his dreams, but he never seems to have them in his waking life and actually seems kind of surprised that Madam Webb has, has those. it's not even like.
Right.
something that's feasible to him that the spider could have given her.
Yeah, Madame Web also gets like this echolocation kind of power that isn't really explained. I believe she's just connecting to the web.
I think she's just seeing into the future. It's not really true echolocation. It's just, she knows that something like something's flying towards her and she knows that she sees into the future that's going to hit her. So she just knows that like a second before to like deflect it or duck. yeah, I don't, cause she, doesn't seem to get any physical, powers from the spider. It's, it's only the clairvoyance.
I see.
Yeah.
Like she's not stronger. She can't actually one of my favorite scenes is when she has her mom's old journals and she starts to like connect the dots. And then she like looks at the wall and she's like, can I climb a wall? And she tries and then falls down. Yeah. Uh, which, kind of hits one of the reasons why that's my favorite is ever since I was a kid. I.
Yeah. You don't know until you try.
I've thought like, what if, what if everybody has some weird superpower? You just haven't tried it. Like, you know, it's something where it's like your superpower is that all of sudden you can like, you know, put your socks on really fast or something, you know, something that's really dumb and not particularly useful, but it's something that you just haven't tried. and so, yeah. yeah, maybe, maybe I like that idea that we all have some secret superpower that we haven't.
Yeah.
You
I did like that scene too where it just felt genuine of like, don't know, maybe I can do something awesome. Turns out she can't, but.
cross yet.
Yeah.
Have you tried climbing a wall recently or a ceiling?
Not
recently, but I remember as a kid definitely trying it. Like maybe I can move stuff with my mind if I just try hard enough. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So that that felt real to me.
Oh yeah, yeah, I definitely tried that. yeah. Well, it's worth, yeah,
it may be worth trying again. Just, I mean, you never know what's, you may have gotten bitten by a spider last night while you were sleeping and.
You
Yeah,
maybe I can shoot spaghetti out of my fingernails now and I just haven't thought to try that.
Yeah. Anyway, so, Madame Webb, I guess we can call her Madame Webb now. Like she never really uses that name, Auras. ⁓
No,
I don't know that anybody even says it.
Yeah, by the way, this is a tangent. It really bugs me that her name, her character's name is, was it Cassandra Webb with two B's W E B B. And then the movie is Madam Webb with one B. why not just call the movie Madam Webb with two B's or call the character Cassandra Webb with one B. Like why, like, why is like, this is my superhero name. I'm going to drop the B. I don't know.
It really annoyed me.
I don't know, maybe it's like Clark Kent's glasses where she puts the bee on the end of her name and they're like, I don't know, you couldn't possibly be Madame Webb. You're Cassandra Webb with two bees.
Yeah.
Anyway, so Madame Web has quasi kidnapped these teenagers. She steals a cab, gets them all in the cab.
Yeah.
drives out to the woods to get away from villain. And then, she leaves them in the woods for reasons that aren't really clear to us or to the characters in the scene, why she's gone. but it basically just sets it up so that the girls leave the woods to go, they're really hungry. So they go to a diner and then Madam Webb has these visions of them being attacked on the diner. And so she goes to save them again from the villian.
Yeah.
Yeah, she just drives her cab right into the diner and crushes him and ⁓ makes her get away. before she leaves, Ezekiel grabs onto her wrist and starts to poison her.
⁓ what? Yeah.
does that come back later? I mean, she mentions it later.
She mentions that he has a neurotoxin which could potentially cause you to go into cardiac arrest. So they practice CPR later.
yeah, that's why,
that's why it's set up. There's a very long, it felt like a really long scene where they all practice CPR. She, since she's a paramedic and, one of the girls is like, you're a really good teacher. I mean, it's, it's they, they add up and I was like, this is a checkoff CPR. Like they, they've set this up so that at some point all the girls are going to have to perform. She even like teaches them, okay, if you get tired, here's how you switch off so that each of you can.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
of CPR at the same time, like continuously. was, yeah. Yeah. So spoiler alert, that does come back to ⁓ get used where they all try to revive Madame Webb when she's near death again.
haha
Also, while they're in the diner, they're supposed to be laying low. They've been basically kidnapped, but they know someone is after them. And so their version of laying low is to go to the diner, start flirting with a table of boys, and then start dancing on the table to Toxic by Britney Spears. And I think they play the whole song in the movie. I know.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, they were cute boys there and they had they couldn't lay low.
It was so ridiculous, but I guess it was 2003 and that's how 2003 was for most of us.
Yeah, teenage boys and girls hanging out in this diner with a bunch of truckers and yeah.
It's a truck stop diner basically.
I felt like Dakota Johnson just
had this monotone deadpan through so much of the movie that I was like, she looked bored playing this movie. Sydney Sweeney looked bored through the whole thing. She just seemed like half asleep. yeah, it was really, I don't know. What did you think about their performances?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I put on my notes that it doesn't seem like anybody wanted to be in this movie. ⁓ And I looked into it and apparently Dakota Johnson kind of basically said she was disinterested in the role. She wasn't sure if it was even going to be good while they were filming it. So I think that she really was just not into it.
Yeah
And I know that Sydney Sweeney has made fun of the movie when she was on SNL. So I think that it really was that none of them really cared about the project that much.
I I wonder how much I saw some of that stuff too. And I wondered how much of that was like after the fact. I mean, because they got so much criticism, like what else are you going to say? Like, I mean, it's kind of hard to be like, well, I tried my, you I tried really hard and you know, I just, I'm just terrible. Yeah. Uh, so I mean, it seems like a bit of a cop out to be like, well, yeah, I was bored during, but I mean, it really comes across like several times. just seems.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm just not good.
I believe
her that she was not interested in the movie because it comes through.
Yeah.
Yeah, Adam Scott was probably the best best person in the movie. I know we're bouncing around in terms of scenes. She rescues them from the diner, takes them to the motel where she teaches them CPR.
By far.
She's also super mean to these girls. She's constantly yelling at them and like, tell me your names, tell me your names! Like she doesn't even give them a chance to respond. she also said, all of you should be so sorry for what you did to me. And then she slams the like glass window between the front and the back seat on the cab. Yeah, she's just a jerk to them. She's not nice.
Yeah, well...
Yeah.
But they're like loyal to her for protecting them from Man-Spider, I guess. I honestly felt bad for the girls for most of the movie. I don't know, wondered if they had Stockholm Syndrome by the end or something. Because she doesn't, other than her having the clairvoyance of knowing like you are about to be in danger, she doesn't do anything for them to earn their loyalty.
Yeah, she,
and she is constantly trying to get rid of them. And I mean, like I said earlier, they, give stop sob stories for each of the girls in terms of why their parents aren't in the picture or at least not interested in being in the picture. and yeah, madam web keeps trying to say, well, I'm good. Let me just take you to your parents and have them deal with it.
Yeah.
They basically
beg to stay with her, this woman who is abusive to them.
Yeah, it's a weird dynamic. ⁓ so I mean, that leads into, she leaves them again. she drops them off with Ben to take care of them while she goes off to Peru to, I guess, figure out what's going on and, and see, I don't know. I don't really understand why she goes to, did that make sense to you?
Well, so I think that she saw the picture of her mother with Ezekiel and she realized this is connected somehow. cause she knew Ezekiel was the one that was after these girls. So I think that she was like, I'm going to go back and try to continue my mom's research and figure out what she was looking for or why she was there. And it basically rehashes the first scene in its entirety.
Right.
Yeah, play by play.
And the only extra thing
that we learned from it is that while her mom was pregnant, she found out that Cassie had some birth defect or disease or something. I can't remember what they said it was. there was no cure and her life expectancy was not going to be good or quality of life wouldn't be good. And so her mom was like, well, what about this specific toxin treatment?
with spiders and they're like, it's super rare. So that's why she was in the jungle was trying to find a treatment for her daughter and Cassie spent her whole life being mad at her mom for going into the jungle while she was that pregnant and dying and leaving her alone. And now she realizes why she was there.
There was a line earlier in the movie that I wrote down where she's looking at a picture of her mom or something. And she says, I hope the spiders were worth it, yeah. But yeah, she realizes her mother did love her this whole time. Yeah. I still don't understand why she knew she had to go to Peru to find answers, but she talks to head spider person dude.
Yeah, she's very angsty.
Yeah.
in the cave and he like pushes her into the water. And I guess at this point she like gets the full extent of her powers, right? Like now she can control the clairvoyance, I guess. Well, yeah.
That's what it seems like.
She has a better understanding of it at least. She knows what's happening to her. know that she ever has control of the visions though. They just seem to come to her. And she responds.
Yeah.
I did have a note. she leaves these three teenagers with Uncle Ben and I guess explains the situation, which they're... How good of a work friend do you have to have? Like, do you have any of your work friends if they're like, hey, these three teenagers that I met yesterday...
Yeah.
you
I've definitely not kidnapped them.
Yeah, but they're on the news that people are looking for them. Can you watch them for a week while I leave the country? Somehow she's able to leave the country, even though like there's an APB out and Amber Alerts and all this. But anyway, how good of a work friend? Do you have any work friends that are that good that you would you would watch three teenage girls for a week?
But not the news.
Yeah
No, but I am accepting friendships. If anybody is willing to do that type of thing for their friend, let me know. I need a friend like that in my life.
Ha ha ha!
Yeah, yeah.
You need a friend to drop off teenage girls that you've not kidnap.
Wait, I take that back. ⁓
Never mind, cut that, cut that. ⁓
Yeah. Yeah.
anyway, so, I also loved just, it was a small thing, but I loved that she knew take a week, like she'd planned out. ⁓ there's this whole montage where she's like, takes a small plane at some point and then this bus and she's like looking at this old map and like pictures that her mom had taken to like navigate through the, the Amazon jungle to figure.
Yeah.
I've never been
to Peru or the Amazon, but I don't imagine that you just fly until you land someplace and then you just get out and you're like, I'm going to follow these cartoon maps. Exactly to the place where my mom was 30 years ago. She like holds it up and it matches perfectly. Yeah.
These old pictures. Yeah.
Yeah, this is the river. then,
and then for what again, it's not like she's like, ⁓ I know that I'm going to find the spider people here. And they're going to explain how I can take down the villain. Like all that stuff with the villain is happening in New York. Like, why are you flying other side of the world to, figure this out anyway.
There's a lot of this movie that I feel like happens to Cassandra Webb and not like that she does anything to drive it.
Yeah, that's true.
So like,
she just happened to fall into like meeting the guy who was there when she was born, because he was waiting for her. Like he said he was, promised her mom that he would be there when she came back. like, she's just stumbling along the whole time and not actually doing anything herself. Like she's just reacting to stuff that's happening to her.
this transitions well actually into the, into the boss battle, which she, she comes back from Peru and she, like you talked about earlier, she, she's better at her clairvoyance where she can like dodge shrapnel when they're battling the villain. but she doesn't really, she kind of has this plan of how they, she's going to, they're going to go to this warehouse.
Yeah.
Thank
And she knows that at this warehouse, she can kill the villain because a Pepsi sign is going to fall on him. And so it's all about like leading him to that specific location and point in time where this will happen. it's one of the worst superhero boss battles I've ever seen where like she has no physical powers. The other three girls with her have no
yeah.
powers either they're just like they're all essentially running away from the villain until they get to that point in time where a sign falls on them.
And we're not even sure what his powers are. Like he doesn't do anything cool. He jumps in the air really high sometimes. And he, yeah, he's got movement. He can climb on walls and stuff. But like, other than that, I don't know what he can really do. there was this really funny low budget gag during the fight where Ezekiel like,
he can traverse the terrain pretty quickly.
Is running and he jumps up on this car and he's preparing for this really dramatic like big superhero jump and right as he jumps it cuts so you don't ever see. It was like they had planned for some CG like awesome jump super high or something. Yeah, they just they just cut it so it's just a man in a suit getting up on a car preparing to jump.
Hahaha
They ran out of budget.
And what was the plan? just set off a bunch of fireworks in the warehouse. Like how would that kill the villain?
I know. don't think she knew. All she saw was the sign falling on him. And so, yeah, it's like a lot of action that doesn't make sense in terms of why the characters are setting this place up. Yeah, they've set all these fireworks off in this warehouse that's a death trap. Shrapnels flying everywhere. I never caught where the shrapnel's coming from.
Yeah, they're just plotting along.
I know it isn't explained and also these are like heat seeking fireworks that always seem to manage to find someone directly to aim at. But yeah, it's like, I don't know. I don't know where the shrapnel is coming from and I don't know why these fireworks are like so damaging to everything around them. It's like the whole building's blowing up.
Yeah.
Yeah. And by,
and I, I've, we've kind of glossed over this, but these, these three girls are supposed to be superheroes at some point in time in the future. They don't have their, they don't have any powers now, but, but all four of them are working together to, to fight this villain who's like super, you know, he's super strong, he's fast, he's, and they're just like regular teenage girls that are trying to fight him.
But they aren't now.
There was a part where the skater girl skates on a piece of shrapnel to go like punch Ezekiel or whatever. But other than that, like I...
Yeah.
I felt like a Ninja Turtles movie from the 90s or something.
Yeah, it was, it was a weird action sequence. and, at one point Ezekiel sees Madame Webbing is like, you're just like your mother. And he's like, his dialogue is he's, he's insulting her mother a couple of times for what reason I didn't catch, at all.
Yeah, she never met her mother, and you also only knew her mother for presumably like a few weeks while you were in the jungle. He doesn't know what her mother was like.
Yeah. ⁓
yeah, at some point we know one of her powers that she can be in three places, multiple places at once because she's Claire Claire. Yeah. Like, so it's not just clairvoyance. She's like, now, I don't know. I don't know what you call that power. ⁓ and then I love, she's like, the three girls are in danger. They're all about to fall into the, you know, to their deaths or something. And so she finds it in herself to like split.
She's tapped into the web.
Yeah.
into three and then Ezekiel just walks up and punches her. was like, yeah, this is like, that's what he would just punch her and like she that's all he needs to do to defeat her. But he ends up, I don't know, he ends up getting killed by that Pepsi sign.
Yeah.
Yeah, he says, you can't beat me with your mind. And she's like, are you sure about that? And then she doesn't actually do anything. She just lets the sign fall on him. She just knows it's going to happen ahead of time. But he was always going to die from that sign. Presumably.
Yeah.
Yeah, which I mean, I guess if you
if you have that power, then that's I mean, that is more powerful to know that he's going to die that way. I
Also,
I loved the product placement of Pepsi in this movie. There was a baby shower scene early on where everyone was drinking Pepsi's and I just thought that was really funny. ⁓
Yeah, she holds
a can of Pepsi for like five minutes without ever opening it or drinking it or anything. It's just in the shot.
And then the big climax of the movie is on a giant neon Pepsi Cola sign on top of a building. It just felt really funny. So he dies basically with her having done nothing to him.
Yeah.
Right.
And also this scene I felt like was one of the worst with the ADR voice looping where it was like his dialogue felt like it was happening right inside my head and hers was like super flat delivery. Like there were these big action scenes where all of the dialogue felt quiet like they were just talking at normal volume but the saying all of these things you'd normally hear in a Superman fight.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the dialogue was her performance was just really flat and lifeless throughout and then compare like with his weird voiceover work. It was just like the dialogue during this big action sequence was really weird experience. I thought yeah. I think you're right is hands down one of the worst superhero boss battles that I've ever seen.
Yeah, it was a terrible scene.
Hup.
The superhero doesn't even really have any power like the protagonist. And the villain dies from falling from falling signs. And like, do you remember in? In dodgeball when patches Ohuhuahan, their dodgeball coach dies from a sign that falls on him like that. That's it's supposed to be a gag and that was like how their hero died. This is just a sign fell on him.
Yeah, none of them do. All four of them, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, this, is about the same. it was played straight. So it was played for, for drama is played for tension. And then she, she gets, she falls into the water and almost dies. And this is a scene where all the three girls have to come together and save her through CPR. And like, thank God she showed them how to perform CPR so that she,
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah, that was...
But she's blind
now, and I don't know why she's blind.
Well, there were some shots of like shrapnel in the water hitting her face while she was in the water. I mean, yeah, it was very subtle. She's blind and in a wheelchair. I didn't catch the wheelchair part.
the heat-seeking fireworks got her.
I didn't realize that either until the last scene, why is she paralyzed too? Like they don't say what her injuries were.
know, something, something in that boss battle the final scene or set of scenes is she's now a hundred percent into her powers. Like she's, she's, ⁓ yeah, she's, she's blind, but she can see, she says, I can see better than I ever have before. and it's just like,
Yeah, she's awoken.
Yeah.
She's saying bless you to people before they sneeze. Stuff like that.
And
yeah, and then somebody says something about like, Uncle Ben or like, I don't know, something about the new baby and Uncle Ben. And she's like, says something all like knowing that's alluding to what's going to happen to Peter Parker in the future. And it's just like, it's just super cheesy. ⁓
Yeah.
It's
like they were inspired by the Oracle from The Matrix, you know, you know, don't worry about the vase. And, but like, it's so cheesy.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's cool in the Matrix where like, ⁓ and she's, yeah, we all like that character, but here it's, it's like the worst version of that. ⁓ and then, and then they just have this shot of like, all four of them hovering like Madame Webb with these giant blue blockers and like the three girls in these spider women costume that are like the worst design costumes that
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah
And it's, and it's this like, I don't know, this music that's supposed to leave us like all excited and, I don't know, whatever for what's going to happen with this, this franchise of spider women.
Yeah, she gives this very, like, kind of feminist girl power vision of the future speech. But like, don't know, why do they get superpowers? We don't know how they're supposed to become superheroes.
Yeah, it's a w-
It's a weird movie in that, yeah, we never see them. We see like five seconds of these, these girls in Ezekiel's dream sequence where we see them attacking him for like five seconds. And, and then Madame Webb, we see like 5 % of her powers throughout the movie. We don't see that she has like this full, you know, Oracle-esque
Yeah. Yeah.
power until like the last minute of the movie in which they're just like at a hospital and at our apartment. They're not like she's not using those powers for it. She's just using those powers to be annoying like to be the annoying friend who's like, well, actually, I know that this is going to happen. She's not using it for.
Yeah. Nothing's happening.
show off, yeah.
I wrote that she was
I wrote that she was stylishly blind.
Yeah, I don't know. I thought that the costume design was terrible in that last shot.
I wrote that they all dressed like they knew they were the main characters of the movie. Like all of the extras and everybody else dressed in like really muted, monotone stuff. And they were in like obvious main characters, superhero outfits the whole time. Yeah, it's like it was like the it's like a war movie equivalent of the hero always taking their helmet off. Like you can tell that these people are who the movie is about. It just felt like really out of place.
Yeah.
Yeah, super bright. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. ⁓
I don't know from that final shot, never have I least wanted to see the sequel to a movie. ⁓ I mean, that's that's equal. Well, I mean, I think we know now that sequel will never be made, but at some point they thought somebody somewhere in some, some, you know, conference room was like, yes, we've got it. This is going to set us up for.
You
Yeah.
Right.
Can't
wait to explore this world. Why was she so creepy at the end, She was like this smug, creepy...
Yeah, exactly.
She was so annoying. I would be like, I'm never hanging out with this friend.
I know and they're like we're never gonna leave you like the girls were saying that you know, they're gonna be loyal to the end I'm like what has she done to To deserve this kind of loyalty from these people
What did we miss? What other notes do you have about the movie?
⁓ I loved the scene where he was sleeping with the secret NSA agent and he wakes up from this nightmare and she's like, bad dream. And he's like, it's not a dream. I'm going to be murdered one day.
Don't
want to hear that from me one night Stan.
Yeah, he was super creepy. And then I liked the scene where Cassie is watching A Christmas Carol on TV and she talks to the TV and she's like, hate to break it to you, Scrooge. You can't change anything. Like, it's just really bad dialogue. Yeah, I laughed at use the web because when she was like having this
Yeah.
moment trying to figure out how to save the three girls at the end. She has this vision of the the Obi-Wan character from the jungle that helped her and he says, use the web like you like use the force. It was I don't know. It was it was extremely cringy. I liked I liked it more than I should have actually.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Hahaha
I liked the moment when the villain is working with a sketch artist to try to figure out like how he goes from, I'm picturing, I see these women in my dreams to how I get NSA facial recognition to find them.
Yeah.
Like that's the best sketch artist ever. Yeah.
Yeah.
And they're wearing
masks too, like he's describing them in masks. So that's what they have to work with.
Right. It is in his vision. Yeah. And they figure out what they look like
and they have to make them 10 years younger because apparently this happens, you know, 10 years in the future. ⁓ I wrote down that, ⁓ Cassandra Webb doesn't know how to read with an inside book. there are multiple points where she's reading from diaries or otherwise, or where she's just talking out loud and yeah, she doesn't know how to read.
Yeah.
she talks to herself a lot.
Yeah, and this was this came from just reading about this movie. Apparently, I don't know if you caught this, but apparently it was set in the 1990s and then reshot to be set in the 2000s so they could get the timeline right for Tom Holland to be Spider-Man in modern era. So it kind of explains if if you know that going in there, like you can tell they're driving a lot of.
older cars for 2003 and wearing like older like vintage clothing so yeah basically like it's hard to place the time that they're in if they didn't tell you it was in 2003.
Yeah. Yeah.
any hot takes or any other thoughts about this movie?
It just, I don't know, it never felt tense or suspenseful to me. Like the action was pretty non-action-y. thought like a lot was going on, but nothing was really happening. I thought the villain was super, super campy. ⁓ Yeah. And then the weirdness with the dialogue, the overdubbed...
Yeah, very, very one note.
dialogue was just, I don't know, it made his character entirely feel surreal and then the performances for the rest of them are just kind of uninteresting.
the whole movie was an origin story movie, like we said. Like none of the characters became their full superhero self until essentially the epilogue. I am, you know, this was the least well done origin story movie that I've probably seen. But I think at this point in time, I mean, we've talked about Marvel and superhero fatigue, like...
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I'm just completely done with origin stories. mean, one of the reasons why I liked Superman release this year and even Fantastic Four to Lester degree is like both of them were like, we're not going to rehash the origin story. Like we can, if we care about these, these characters, we already know their origin story or we can read, you know, a Wikipedia blurb about how they got. And if it's something as dumb as like you got bitten by a spider in the jungle.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, we don't care. it to us.
Her mom
got bitten by a spider. Like it didn't even...
Yeah, we don't even really know how she got her powers. She almost drowned slash spider and then got into water later again. She took a swim twice in her life plus the spider and that gave her powers.
Yeah,
wasn't even an actual bite from a spider to her, it was to her mom, and then she got the most underwhelming powers you could possibly imagine. And it only took two hours to find that out.
Yeah. Yeah.
so what's your verdict on this movie?
it's certainly not good. I won't, I won't say that it's good and it's
Yeah. Is it so good it's
bad or so bad it's good? mean.
it could be. I don't know. It's very boring. It's very boring. it deserves all of the razzies that it won, but I do think that it's unfairly hated and like over scrutinized, because it's, it's boring, but it's not offensive. And I think that there was like this toxic troll culture when this came out that
I think that there's definite themes of feminism in this movie that upset some people and there were parts in the movie where I felt like the villain clearly like represented misogyny like he was trying to keep the girls down and you know, these girls are gonna be powerful in the future and so he's gotta See that that doesn't happen and she's like no girl power. So I think that there were people that Unfairly criticized it
But it is it is bad. I I liked the chemistry between the three girls I thought that they actually interacted with each other in kind of an interesting way, but Yeah, definitely seemed like Dakota Johnson didn't want to be in this movie Adam Scott makes everything better. So I'm glad he was in it but
I think that this movie suffers from the same thing that ⁓ Morbius does, where it takes itself too seriously and it's unintentionally funny. Like they're not trying to be campy or like slapsticky, but it comes off that way because it's executed so poorly. But yeah, I won't see this again, I don't think.
Yeah.
Yeah. I sounds like you liked it better than I did. I did not like it at all. I don't want to be lumped in with the, you know, the misogynist crowd. Like it's not, yeah, I don't, I don't hate it for any of those reasons. Yeah. I just, I mean, like you said, it was boring. I thought it was, I mean, poorly done. thought the
There are valid reasons to not like it.
You know, the fact that Dakota Johnson was just bored throughout the movie came through to me and, it's hard to fall in love with somebody's performance or with the characters. The plotting didn't really make sense. didn't even, I felt like Morbius, you know, I gave it some credit credit because there were some interesting themes that it tried to dance with here. couldn't tell you, I couldn't tell you one theme that,
Yeah, one like deeper meaning or, you know, illusion or allegory or, you know, anything that it was true. The only like thing of substance was, guess, her wrestling with being mad at her mother for going into the jungle when she was nine months pregnant. But I mean, that's just.
Right.
Yeah, and there
was a little thing for foster kids in there too. Maybe going into the foster system is not the worst thing in the world. So that was the only message is foster, being a foster kid is not the end of the world. And girls are going to be powerful someday and you should just accept that.
I mean sure
I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, I didn't even get that like bigger theme of like, here's like, let's think about women's role in society and how, you know, like I didn't even, I mean, yeah, I,
I don't know that
they were trying to hit that very hard. It may have been unintentional.
No, I don't think they're trying to.
I mean, I think that's the thing about this movie. They just it just didn't seem like they tried very hard at all with anything with like with the plot, with the acting, with the, you know, with the action scenes. And it was almost like they just had a checkbox of like, have to create a movie with this IP and like it should have this and it should have that and should have that. And like, let's just check the boxes and get the movie done. So, I mean, I don't know, not to. I obviously don't know what's behind the process and I'm not, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't have the near the talent that most of the people behind the movie do. you know, who am I to criticize? But, but yeah, I, I felt like, in some ways I don't know, like I almost appreciate the war of the worlds more because like it actually like tried to do, do something interesting and innovating. And here I'm just like, I, I'm trying to find something good to say about this movie and, I have a hard time finding something.
Hahaha
Yeah, it's like they made a movie because they decided they needed to make a movie. And it was, it's like an uninteresting plot involving an uninteresting character with actors that aren't interested in the product.
Yeah.
Yeah. There was no real story there. And so, yeah, it's just like, let's make a movie. Um, but you know, somehow that movie made a hundred million and then in the box office. Yeah. Here we are. Well, so at this point we, we like to give alternate picks, like, um, what's a movie that, that you would recommend for somebody to see from the same director, from the same actors, from, you know, thematically the same.
Yeah.
Yeah, and here we talking about it.
What do you have here?
I have a few. I don't know much about the director, S.J. Clarkson. I looked him up. It seems like they have done a lot of single episodes of television. So hard to say if I know them or not. It's the same writers as Morbius. So shout out to Morbius. ⁓
Yeah.
I wasn't sure about Dakota Johnson. I went with 21 Jump Street for her, ⁓ just because I love that movie.
I struggle a little bit because I think that's cheating if it's like not like she she didn't have a major role in that movie, right?
I don't know. I don't think so. I don't really remember it.
⁓
I don't think I've seen any Dakota Johnson movie other than this where it's like she's the lead. ⁓
Yeah, that's I
struggled that I saw she was in it and I was like, like that movie. So that's my pick.
Yeah, I was kind of
surprised and I was like, how have I not seen her in a movie before? I, and I was like, okay, social network. And I went back and she's in one scene and I went back and watched that scene. I was like, Oh, I remember that character. I didn't, I didn't remember that as being Dakota Johnson. Uh, and, uh, so yeah.
Yeah.
She's in the Fifty
Shades movies, which are not something that I'm really into, so...
Maybe, maybe
we'll have that on our February theme. Yeah.
It would not surprise me. ⁓
Sydney Sweeney, I'm also similarly not that knowledgeable about her career. ⁓ So I put Euphoria. I've heard it's good, but I haven't actually seen Euphoria. Yes. Isabelle Merced, Alien Romulus. I went into that movie only having seen the first trailer and not reading any reviews or knowing what the plot was. And I like that movie a lot more than
Same, same.
Okay. that's cheating too.
I thought I would. I don't know if that's a controversial take or not. I don't know if it's well received, but I liked Alien Romulus. I thought it was a lot of fun. And then Adam Scott obviously parks in rec in my favorite step brothers.
Yeah, I haven't seen it.
Yeah. Yeah. I, well, I'm, I'm picking on your, your picks because I struggled to find an alternate pick. And I was like, this seems like a really deep cut to be like, I really recommend this movie where she was in this one scene. And ⁓ yeah, exactly. ⁓ yeah, the only, the only thing I had was, Isabella Merced, which plays, she had a t-shirt, by the way.
Choose a background character. Uncredited.
her t-shirt in the movie says, I eat math for breakfast. Which was like, just a good example of like, let's have the costume director explain this character for us in the most obvious way without having to give like real dialogue or action to this character to explain how smart she is.
haha
Yeah
They were super stereotypical teenage girl characters.
Yeah,
I'm the smart girl. So I'm going to wear t-shirts saying that I am smart. But anyway, she was in the second season of last of us and I really liked her in that. Yeah. So that's, I guess that's my pick. Not a movie, not any of the main, yeah, I'll try to do better next time
All right, well, that's about all that I want to talk about Madame Web for, yeah, at least for a few years. Thanks for joining us. We have a couple more movies left in our modern messes and hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm Ade
Forever.
And I'm Aaron and thanks for listening to the worst movie podcast.