“That man is Ezekiel Sims, he was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.”

Justin’s rating: That’s it, I’m going to start slathering myself with spiders now until I get powers. Or die.

Justin’s review: Out of all of the ridiculous “extended universe” wannabes that sprouted up in the MCU era, I’d like to nominate Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSMU, and yes, that’s the official designation) as the absolute silliest. Oh, this would be an amazing (no pun intended) idea if it centered around our favorite wall-crawler and spiraled out from him into a web (pun intended) of characters and connections. But the problem is that Sony made a deal to keep Spider-Man in the MCU but tried to force a cinematic universe based on Spidey’s friends and foes without him.

Venom aside, the SSMU has been a clown car parade of critical and financial disappointments. And while we may cover Morbius and Kraven another time, today we’re going to jam our rapidly diminishing mental capacities into the torture box known as Madame Web.

On paper, this could work. A bunch of female Spider-women-to-bes? A coming-of-age origin story? A posse of potential superheroes who come under threat by a future-looking bad guy who wants to wipe them out before they get good? Sure. Why not. It’s not the best plot, but it could work if it had tight scripting, sharp dialogue, Peter Parker’s sense of humor, and some interesting variations on Spidey powers.

That is absolutely not what this film is. This movie is merely an experiment where joy is surgically removed and replaced by a rather grumpy lead character, a trio of helpless princesses outside of their castles, clunky discussions, and an almost total lack of superheroism.

Like all classic movies of our time, Madam Web begins with a jerk shooting a pregnant woman in order to steal her spider, but it’s OK, because she’s saved by the mythical spider-people who live on the Amazon treetops and make their spiders bite pregnant women so that they give birth, die, and their kids have extra powers. All of that happens, by the way, in the span of 60 seconds, so have fun with the mental whiplash this backstory entails.

Dakota Johnson, freshly woken from hibernation and not happy about it, is Cassandra Webb, an EMT born of the aforementioned spider-birth. She’s super-dark and glowering and doesn’t “get” kids, which angers the movie irony gods and ensures that she’s going to be babysitting youngsters for the rest of this tale.

Cassie gets the worst of all spider-powers with mere precognition, which results in visions warning her that three girls (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor) — all future spider-women — will be killed by a guy named Ezekiel Sims unless she does something about it. She’s not happy about it, but she’ll do it… just with all the reluctance of a middle-school kid being told to eat Brussel sprouts.

Now, you’d expect this as an origin story to be maybe half this burgeoning team of female empowerment coming into their own and the latter half suiting up in cool costumes and giving us thrilling crime-fighting fun.

Haha you jerk, that’s not what this film is. No, Madame Web is 100% origin story, and the only glimpses we see of any of these women in costume are in visions. That’s it. This whole thing is just a prologue for a follow-up that the underperforming box office ensured will never happen. So this is a waste.

I think I speak for many of us when I say that Hollywood needs to cut it out with these overbearing “set up for the next movie that will never come” flicks and simply tell really, really good stories without worrying about sequel prep.

Madame Web was such a disaster right out the gate that the cast even openly besmirched it — and bad talking your own film is something actors virtually never do, especially during press tours.

This is a stitched-together movie of half-baked ideas, Dutch camera angles, and Dakota Johnson giving it about 23%. At least we got some Adam Scott, who’s charming in about everything, and a dash of fun precog web CGI stuff. But Spider-man, this isn’t. Heck, it isn’t even Birds of Prey.

Intermission!

• It opens on a web! A web! Like the title!
• The mythical spider-people who run over the treetops — why can’t we watch a movie about them?
• “Who flips off an ambulance?”
• She can’t fold cardboard?
• “Apparently I have no future.”
• “I hope the spiders were worth it, mom.” is a statement any sane person says to themselves alone in an apartment.
• “Did I die?”
• So many superhero crouching poses
• It took me way too long to realize that Adam Scott plays Ben Parker, Peter’s uncle
• Bringing up the fact that your mom died in childbirth WHILE YOU’RE AT A BABY SHOWER is not the most tactful idea