Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. To read the last entry, check out Who Really Wins With Comcast’s New StreamSaver Bundle.
Inside me there are two wolves: one wolf will defend the fact that streaming originals have won Oscars and can be remarkable; the other believes that sometimes the best part of films on streaming is finding the dumbest thing imaginable, kickin’ your feet up, and breaking out the popcorn (with Reese’s Pieces sprinkled in and Sour Patch Watermelon on the side, obviously). Madame Web speaks to that second wolf.
Now, let me make one thing abundantly clear before y’all rush down to the comments: Madame Web is a terrible movie. It’s ugly to look at, much of the dialogue is laughable at best and, even as a woman who embraces “cringe”, the second-hand embarrassment from the movie’s terrifically bad ending made me curl up in my seat.
And I am glad that this idiotic movie and every second of its one-hour and fifty-six minutes exists.
Madame Web has spent much of the last week at #1 on the Netflix Top 10 (recently dethroned by A Simple Favor, which is actually a great film), and frankly? A high-ranking spot on a streamer’s Top 10 list is exactly where a movie like Madame Web belongs.
Back when the movie came out, Rosie Knight posited that Madame Web is the perfect sleepover movie. Y’all did not like that much, but I regret to inform you that she’s right. Madame Web is the perfect sleepover movie in the same way that it is a perfect streaming movie. Both are often watched with a myriad of distractions (like, say, mercilessly heckling the film with your friends), and frequently miss the critical mark.
Madame Web manages to hit the sweet spot between awful and delightful group (or distracted) viewing for a host of reasons, whether in how entertaining it can be to make fun of, how easy it is to turn into a drinking game, etc. But, what makes me want to come back to this silly thing with my friends is the sole fact that I am simply happy it exists.
Movies — particularly in the superhero genre — featuring a woman in the leading role were so few and far between for such a long while that, whenever we did get a movie that represented us, it always had to mean something. I love impactful stories! (The first Wonder Woman movie made me feel like I could fight an ox! Y’all know how I feel about The Marvels!) They’re very important to me. But when every story has to be that story it does more harm than good to both the genre and the viewers.
Madame Web could not be further from “that” story. This movie means nothing! It is a bad, bad superhero flick that joins the swaths of other bad, bad superhero flicks! I’ll undoubtedly pay for this sentence in the comments section, but women deserve bad superhero movies too, dangit!
And yes, there have been other bad female-focused superhero movies, but most of them fall into the “bad” category because they’re stumbling over themselves trying to be a movie that they’re not. Elektra tried. Catwoman… grew on me over time. Point is, movies like those fall into the category of “bad, but not that fun,” with “fun” here ranging in definition here. Sometimes it means “so bad it’s good,” others it’s as simple as “it’s easy to laugh at.” And, well… Madame Web isn’t so bad it’s good. But neither was Morbius — a film with absolutely zero redeeming qualities that was skyrocketed to infamy because of the internet’s insistence on meme-ing everything — and folks still rallied behind that monstrosity for some reason!
In short, Madame Web may be the butt of all of our jokes, but it’s also already showcasing its ability to bring people together. Was that the intent of the movie? No. But hey, at least we’ll always have the baby shower scene. (A scene of which I do unironically love, because that is me at every baby shower I have ever been forced to attend. Baby showers are awful, y’all.)
At the time of publishing this piece, the flick remains at #2 on Netflix’s Top 10. Turns out her web really did connect us all.
