“Madame Web” bombed at the box office, but did it deserve to? This past Wednesday, the latest Sony and Marvel collaboration titled “Madame Web” was released to theaters. The film features Dakota Johnson in the lead role of “Madame Web” as well as Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor in supporting roles.
The film tells the origin story of the character Cassie, better known as “Madame Web,” who is a clairvoyant partner of Spider-Man’s in the “Spider-Man” comics. The film accomplishes much of what a standard super hero film sets out to do. It was entertaining, suspenseful and featured plenty of super-power fighting sequences, all without being too violent or complicated. What’s interesting though is the overwhelmingly negative response the film received from the public.
The discourse surrounding “Madame Web” on the internet is filled with many people bashing the film and often encouraging others not to watch it. The film even managed to get as low as a 13 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The big question here is, why has the film gotten such overwhelmingly negative reviews? The film has a very talented cast who all gave great performances, the special effects were on par with any other Marvel film and the story itself was an adaptation of a preexisting comic book story like the rest of the successful superhero films. This begs the question — are superhero films going out of style?
The disappointing reception of “Madame Web” wasn’t the only time in the last few years that Sony and Marvel have had a difficult time selling audiences on new movies. “The Marvels,” released by Marvel Studios this past November, landed its spot as the lowest-grossing MCU film of all-time, only making $46 million with its roughly $270 million budget, the fourth-highest budget of any Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film. This could indicate a decrease in audience interest in superhero films, but it could also indicate an unwillingness from audiences to move on from the classic superheroes like the Avengers that Marvel has focused on for so many years and expand their interests onto new, female lead superhero films.
Another question worth considering is, what do current audiences expect from superhero films? It seems that something audiences loved most about the era of the original Avengers in the MCU was how deeply connected they felt to the characters. With most of the characters having had one or more solo-films and multiple combined adventures, the lore and relationships involved in those movies ran incredibly deep, having been built up over the course of years.
The new superhero films being released lacked that level of connection, because most of the films released by Marvel over the years since “Avengers: Endgame” have been about introducing us to new characters to allow the MCU to outlive the original Avengers. The budgets, casting, costuming and writing quality have all remained quite similar across the board.
When comparing superhero films, it’s important not to judge the success of a character’s introduction against the success of an already well-established character. The box office opening for “Captain America: The First Avenger” made about $65 million for the character’s debut film, with the sequel film “Captain America: Civil War” pulling in almost three times that amount at $179 million. When audiences compare Madame Web to a popular superhero film like “Avengers: Endgame,” which made a whopping $357 million at its box office opening, it’s important to remember that those characters were also new once. And “Madame Web’s” projected $24 million opening week isn’t that far off from that of “Captain America: The First Avenger.” It’s important that anybody who’s interested in the film goes and sees it for themselves and doesn’t let the bandwagon of negative reviews stop them from enjoying a great movie.