Welcome to Film School, Issue #1: Madame Web
I'm your host and professor; you may call me Dr. Filmsworth
Welcome, class, to a new segment of this newsletter. Think of it sort of like a graduate level class at a prestigious and known film-centric college taught by a knowledgable and cinema-knowing critic, like Roger Ebert, but in newsletter form.
I will be your expert guide, Dr. Audrey P. Filmsworth, and everything I say is correct. Each class, we will be discussing one to nine films that I happened to watch recently, and I will tell you what you should think about them by telling you what I think about them.
And our first study? None other than the 2024 hit Madame Web, the instant classic that brings us right back to everyone’s best year alive: 2003.
Everyone loved Madame Web. Not one person did not like it. Just kidding, everyone famously hated it, hahaha. From the moment I heard about its reception, I have been dying to see it. And now that I have, I can honestly say…it’s perfect!
Spoliers are about to go RIGHT up your ass! You have been warned!
We open in the middle of a jungle where a woman scientist whose last name is literally “Web” is looking for one specific spider no one can find. There is a man with her who came there “to protect her*” (*hand her an umbrella when it’s not raining and complain about how she hasn’t found the spider yet).
Now I knew right away, at this very moment, that I was in for something special, because when this protector man speaks…all of his lines are ADR-ed and the dialogue magically comes out of his face as his mouth remains completely sealed shut.
“Oh,” I said to myself, gladly chuckling directly from my heart, “I’ve found something VERY special.”
“Give me my spider!” - one of the villain’s first menacing lines (mouth not open at all)
I don’t have time to get TOO excited, because it’s time for a plot twist! He’s not actually a protector at all! He’s the villain, and he will NOT stand by and let this Special Spider help anyone because, quote, “Nobody helped him.”
Nobody helped him! That’s fine. That’s all the information we need, anyway. Nobody helped him. Got it.
Flash forward to 2003 and he’s sneaking up on women at the theater who keep that spider he likes as a pet and has passwords he wants. Then he sleeps with them and kills them, and…takes the spider? I thought he already had the spider since he had powers but maybe he wants more powers. Do you know? Not important, anyway, he talks like a Shakespearean villain while saying sentences like, “Where’s my spider?” and “They took my spider!” and has a lair (?) that’s just one room with like five computer screens and a woman typing on a computer whose whole job is listening to him describe the teens who “kill” him every night in his dreams (?) so she can show him exactly what these literal children ACTUALLY look like AND track them!
Meanwhile, our heroine-to-be, Cassie Web (Dakota Johnson) keeps being given Pepsi cans and not opening them. Seriously, everyone keeps giving this woman cans of Pepsi and she does NOT want them. The only times she’s not holding cans of Pepsi is when she is watching A Christmas Carol at not Christmas-time and responding to emergencies at the firework emporium that just caught on fire and is at risk of exploding more because, again, it’s a huge building with just fireworks in it.
Class, this movie is perfect. Write that down.
Soon enough she finds out she might have powers when a pigeon smashes into her window but then time rewinds and she opens the window and it flies into her apartment instead of killing itself! And then she says the big line to finish out the scene of: “Guess you didn’t die after all.”
Save the pigeon, save the world. - me (not a line in this movie)
Enter the teenagers! All of them are rude and do regular teen activities like dance on a table at a diner (?) that some random dudes are sitting at. By this point, our stupid villain has donned his goth Spider-Man outfit and is trying to kill them, but since Dakota keeps seeing glass crack in the shape of a web, that means she’s their mom now. And nobody kills her daughters!
*holds head in hands deeply* Okay. I guess this film is trying to tell us about how Spider-Man’s family was involved in, or at least adjacent to, spider-related situations BEFORE Peter Parker was born? I guess one of the characters is Uncle Ben? I guess the pregant lady is Peter’s mom? Why are they doing this to me? Why are they telling me this? It’s making me feel TOO alive! I can’t handle it!
Because, of course. OF COURSE Goth Jon Snow Spider-Man the Villain killed the spider-loving mom of Uncle Ben’s woman friend, who was the first Spider Power Person, because she was born in a spider pool and her last name was “Web.” Of course! THANK YOU for finally fucking telling me!!! I ONLY WAITED MOST OF MY LIFE FOR IT. GOD.
After going to Peru real quick to get a lifetime’s worth of therapy simply by going into a pool in a cave, Dakota returns to…the city…to drive a car THROUGH a gigantic digital Calvin Klein billboard to hit Goth Spider Man with it, because HE jumps INTO the car. I’m in love with this movie and we’re getting married yesterday! Because time…isn’t linear…get it? like the movie…hahaha.
Sorry, I just blacked out. What was I saying?
Ah yes, and as with all good films of our time, the big moment of this movie occurs underneath a giant Pepsi Cola neon sign. Remember that? From 2003? Britney Spears danced under it. Did a can of Pepsi write this movie? If so, it did great. Anyway, the hero of the film IS Pepsi itself—specifically the “P” in Pepsi—and thankfully Goth Spider-Man keeps getting hit by cars so we can stop having problems with him.
Unfortunately, after she drives a paramedic van THROUGH a Calvin Klein billboard and is thrown off the top of the firework emporium, Dakota is inflicted with Firework Eyes* just as (sigh) baby Peter Parker is born. (*“Firework Eyes” is when fireworks go into your eyes[?] in the sea and make you blind but you can see time so it doesn’t matter about regular sight anymore AND you now have three teen daughters).
Class, everybody hated this movie and that’s extremely understandable, but you know why it’s important? Because it’s Dumb As Hell. Because clearly the actors were tricked into doing this movie and that’s hilarious. Because people in theaters everywhere were posting TikToks of an entire audience laughing hysterically at serious parts.
You know what it wasn’t? Boring! I wasn’t bored! I was laughing too hard at every single line. However, let the record show that comic book movies should not be judged based off this film. That would be rude. However, write this down, class: Boring is the biggest film sin.
Well, that’s all for this week’s class, but I’m going to leave you with a resource to look over of my field notes from watching Madame Web. Go ahead and study this and I’ll see you for our next discussion.
Audrey! I'm so glad you added this class to your newsletter. It's wonderful and weird. :)