When a studio has a lot to answer for, what do they do? Rush to blame everyone else. Which is why SONY has been on a whisper-campaign to the press about Dakota Johnson and how she supposedly tanked MADAME WEB.
The reality is that were it not for Dakota -- and her Valentine's Day fan base -- MADAME WEB would have truly bombed. As it is, the film managed to sell more tickets ($97.6 million) than it cost to shoot the film ($80 million). (Ticket income is split with the theaters on a sliding scale -- we are not saying the studio is getting $97.3 million from the ticket sales.)
As we dissect the corpse, blood and spoilers will be spilled -- you have been warned.
Dakota Johnson stars in the film and she has three co-stars Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O'Connor. The three co-stars play teenagers. Dakota plays an adult. There are no quibbles with the acting.
But let's start with the writing. Why can't SONY write adult female characters?
In 2016, SONY launched a GHOSTBUSTERS which was embarrassing. Men had led the cast of two GHOSTBUSTERS in the 80s. And Bill Murray got to get hot and heavy with Sigorney Weaver and Dan Ackroyd got a blow job from a ghost. Nearly four decades later, it was professional virgin time for the four female leads who were in their 30s and 40s. Chaste little, stunted girls posing as women -- that's what SONY offered.
Dakota Johnson's character is in her thirties. There's no boyfriend, there's no girlfriend, there's no spouse. No reference to one ever existing. No hook ups at all. How is this realistic? It's Dakota Johnson.
It's not realistic at all.
And when it's a man -- or even just a teenage boy -- the superhero films clobber you over the head with love interests and attractions (Peter Parker's girlfriend, SHAZAM's 16-year-old Captain Marvel's perverse attraction to Wonder Woman).
Let's move to three teenage girls.
They are going to become Spider-Women. The film's villain (Tahar Rahim) can see into the future and he sees that they will destroy him in the future so -- shades of the 'moral' dilemma of do-you-kill-Baby-Hitler -- he decides to kill them while they're still children.
They go through the whole movie as teenage girls with no super powers. At the end, they still aren't Spider-Women.
Exactly what is there for an audience to applaud?
Dakota Johnson's character?
Madame Web in the comic books is blind and paraplegic. Her power is visions. It's a passive power. Remember how they had to have Phoebe train to fight on CHARMED -- because visions alone were too damn passive for an action heroine.
Dakota's character starts out with the ability to see and walk. Her character is a paramedic as the film starts. She begins to develop her 'powers.' Passive visions. At the film's climax, to save the three young girls, she harnesses a power she was told she had but has yet to use -- the ability to splinter into other selves. She does this with three additional bodies -- one to save each of the girls.
And the villain attacks her.
After she's out of the hospital, we see her paralyzed and blind -- about to eat Chinese.
Hey, we love Dim sum as much as the next person but it's no reason to stand up and cheer as the final scene in a movie.
This isn't a feature film, it's a pilot for a TV show. In fact, it's BIRDS OF PREY without Huntress and Black Canary. And here's the thing there, SONY, fans were outraged when Barbara Gordon (the original Batgirl) was raped by Joker. But they were also outraged that Batgirl was left paralyzed from the assault. Many comic fans have noted that this never happens to a male superhero.
Dakota's playing Oracle (Barbara Gordon's post-Batgirl superhero). And, like Oracle guides Huntress and Black Canary, the future indicated at the end of MADAME WEB is that Madame Web will now guide the Spider-Women.
This was never going to be a blockbuster.
It's not a movie. It's a pilot for a TV show, it's the first 30 or so minutes of a real film but, despite a running time of 116 minutes, it's not a movie -- certainly not a superhero movie where audiences expect a lot of action, a lot of fighting and a lot onscreen that they can cheer.