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Sometimes a film is ruined by the media even before it has been released. For some reason the press and socials will take against something and pillory it to such an extent that when the movie finally goes into cinemas people just load on more and it doesn’t stand a chance. Sadly it is often a project that centres on woman that this happens to, like the 2016 Ghostbusters, Don’t Worry Darling or indeed this, and they rarely survive it. The only time I think a film came out and changed people’s minds was Casino Royale which suffered the whole ‘Bond not Blonde’ campaign after Daniel Craig’s casting then turned out to be an excellent movie.

The problems for Madame Web started with the release of the trailer. To be fair people are generally losing patience with Sony’s run of live action films that feature Spider-Man characters but no Spider-Man because Peter Parker is currently being loaned out to the MCU (thankfully the rights restrictions seem to allow animation) but it was the inclusion of a particularly clunky piece of dialogue in that promo that kicked off the kicking for this one. The offending dialogue; ‘He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died’ suddenly became the focus of a range of memes where people would humorously insert the line into other movies.

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So where are we now that the film is out? Well the above quote has been cut from the final movie but nonetheless the reviews have been harsh with it being described by turns as naggingly dreadful, unreservedly hopeless, lifeless, disjointed, thoroughly incompetent and boring and ineffectual.

Of course it isn’t that bad. It’s not great but it doesn’t deserve the drubbing it has received. The plot is a little underdeveloped, some of the performances surprisingly lacklustre occasionally the visuals look a bit cheap but it does try to do something different with the superhero genre by not really giving its heroes any great powers, at least not until the end (or in the flash forward at the beginning). If you think this is going to be the Spider-Woman movie promised by the marketing then think again, it is actually more of a regular thriller.

The plot centres around Dakota Johnson’s Cassie who after taking an impromptu dip in New York’s East River develops precognitive abilities. This it seems it because of the latent affects of a spider bite her mother received when she was in the womb but it could just as easily have been the pollutants in the water. This allows her to foresee the murder of three teenage girls who she is then able to save and ends up looking after as a villain, who is essentially an evil Spider-Man, repeatedly comes after them. He has special abilities but all they have is a stolen taxi, a cheap motel room and some notebooks detailing her mum’s arachnid research. As a result the film is more than just a series of superpowered smackdowns with the women having to use their nous.

I will admit there are times when some interesting choices are made, mostly around said taxi which Cassie breaks the number plates off but then proceeds to drive around plateless as if that wouldn’t draw more attention. Seriously, it’s a yellow cab in Manhattan, did she think the police were going to be checking the registration on every one around town. Methinks she’d have been better ditching the car altogether, especially after she drove it through the wall of a diner giving it some fairly distinctive dent patterns, but no. This is more the fault of the plotting than the character though because she never does get pulled over.

Narratively I’m not sure about when story is set either. It is 2003, making this a Spider prequel but this doesn’t fit with anything. It makes it pretty clear that this is all going on 15 to 16 years before Peter Parker is bitten by his radioactive bug but which Peter Parker is this? It’s not one we know already because none of them started off their superhero journeys in 2018. That’s two years too late for Tom Holland, six years out for Garfield and a decade and a half off for Maguire. It’s perfect timing for the Spider-Verse, which is Sony’s current Spider-Man series but that’s the wrong Spider-Man. It does explain why Madame Web herself is a young woman here, rather than the old lady she is in the comics but even then she’d only be 46 by the time she starts interacting with Peter Parker, that’s not exactly geriatric.

All in all, this film is entertaining enough though. None of it is surprising; watching it you’ll begin to feel that you can predict the immediate future as well, but there are far worse films. It isn’t one to rush to see at the cinema but it’ll easily help you pass the time once it starts streaming, which following the unfair critical response I can foresee could be quite soon.

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The Ripley Factor:

When I originally set out my parameters for the Ripley Factor, one of the judgements was whether the women depicted were done so positively without masculine traits. It was prompted by an interview Natalie Portman gave in the November 2013 edition of the UK Elle Magazine where she spoke of a fallacy in cinema that a feminist story is one where the woman kicks ass and wins. That wasn’t feminist, she said, that’s macho. What we want is films about real women you can emphasise with, not those that take on typically male characteristics.

For reasons previously discussed Madame Web is a rare comic book movie where this is achieved. All of the four central women manage to succeed against incredible odds with little more than bravery, determination and teamwork (and that taxi). Even at the end when Cassie’s powers come into there own, she uses them to save people not to hurt someone. I’ve not seen any of the reviews pick up on that, but then those people had made up their mind before they saw it.