Do you see Madame Web in your future? Sony’s Spider-Man Universe spinoff starring Dakota Johnson (the Fifty Shades films) as the clairvoyant Marvel character Cassandra Webb is now available to watch online, arriving on streaming three months after audiences showed the superhero movie little love on Valentine’s Day. Madame Web bombed at the box office with just $100 million worldwide, and the scathing reviews gave potential moviegoers a sense of comic book movie déjà vu. It received a C+ CinemaScore — on par with the widely-panned Jonah Hex, the campy Batman & Robin, and Sony’s own Morbius — with critics deeming Madame Web one of the worst comic book movies ever.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Madame Web is among the lowest-rated superhero movies with an 11 percent rating. Few films have fared worse: 1984’s Supergirl, 1997’s Steel, and 2004’s Catwoman all sit at just 8 percent approval from critics, while 2015’s Fantastic Four reboot is the worst-rated of the modern era at 9 percent. Madame Web‘s Rotten Tomatoes score is on par with 2005’s Elektra at 11 percent, but it’s even lower than other comic book movies that also received a C+ CinemaScore from audiences: Batman & Robin (12 percent), Jonah Hex (12 percent), R.I.P.D. (12 percent), The Spirit (14 percent), Spawn (17 percent), and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (19 percent).
After getting smoked by biopic Bob Marley: One Love, Madame Web was the first Marvel-based movie since 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix to fail to open at No. 1 at the box office. (The previous record holder was Fant4stic, which opened at No. 2 in 2015 after being similarly clobbered by critics and audiences.) Its negative critical reception didn’t help. Reviewers pulled no punches as they skewered Sony’s latest Spider-Man spinoff as a “Marvel knock-off,” calling it “a new low for superhero debacles” and “a genuine Chernobyl-level disaster.”
The movie follows psychic paramedic Cassandra “Cassie” Webb (Johnson), who has troubling premonitions about a trio of young women — Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor), and Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced) — and the mysterious, spider-like killer (Tahar Rahim) fated to be defeated by the future Spider-Women.
So, should you watch Madame Web? Here’s what critics had to say, pulled from reviews around the web:
ComicBook: “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. 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.”
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.”
UPI: “A new low for superhero debacles. At least Catwoman and Batman & Robin believed in what they were doing. They were wrong, but Madame Web just feels like a cynical copy of the bare minimum to qualify as a comic book 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.”
Rolling Stone: “Madame Web isn’t as bad as its somewhat botched promotional campaign might suggest. It is, in fact, way worse. A genuine Chernobyl-level disaster that seems to get exponentially more radioactive as it goes along, this detour to one of the dustier corners of Marvel’s content farm is a dead-end from start to finish. 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. Not a single line reading feels as if it hasn’t somehow been magically auto-tuned to subtract emotion and/or inflection. The sole amazing factor of this Spider-spinoff is that someone, somewhere signed off on actually releasing it … a Showgirls of comic-book cinema.”
Madame Web is now streaming on Netflix.