A Mostly Spoiler-Free Madame Web Review: How Misogyny and Review Bombing Ruined a Great Film

A Mostly Spoiler-Free Madame Web Review: How Misogyny and Review Bombing Ruined a Great Film

A recent trend among movies has been “review bombing” which is when a large group of people decide to rate a movie poorly, regardless of whether or not they've seen it, often for reasons outside of the quality of the movie. The end goal is to get the movie to fail by stopping people from going to see it. There is a common trend among which movies are review bombed in this way; all of them have female leads. 

One of the biggest targets for this has been Madame Web, a new Spider-Man movie that was released February 14 of this year. Almost all of the characters are women and the movie largely focuses on female empowerment. 

I went to see this in theaters less than a week after it came out, and there were only two other people there. The mass review bombing caused the movie to be a horrible flop, despite the fact that it had a compelling story line and kept me on the edge of my seat.

The plotline itself was amazing. It was an interesting new take on Spider-Man that brought in new possibilities for what spider-themed superpowers could mean. There was various symbolism throughout the movie, like shattered glass creating a web pattern, that delighted my over analytical heart. In addition to this, there were elements of several different genres throughout the film, rather than just our typical superhero genre. There were certain scenes that felt like they were right out of a horror movie with tense music and dark lighting, while others felt like an Indiana Jones style adventure film. And of course there were action scenes as well, chock full of explosions and fighting. On to the actors, all of them played their parts beautifully. Their characters worked well with each other and their personalities felt genuine. I find that sometimes in movies with a larger cast some of the characters begin to seem like carbon copies of each other, but that is certainly not the case with Madame Web. 

However, this isn’t to say that the movie was perfect. There were definitely parts that had me confused or wanting more. The most distracting of these was that certain bits of dialogue felt forced and unnatural. This did not take away from the story at all, but it did take away from the immersion. Another gripe that I had was simply that I wanted more out of the villain. He didn’t seem to really have a backstory other than “he’s a bad guy who’s power hungry.” I was hoping to see more of his assistant too, whose story seemed to set up for a reform arc that never came. It felt as though once she had served her purpose to the main plot, she just disappeared from the story altogether. While she was certainly not one of the main characters, both she and the main villain had much more potential. 

Despite these flaws, I still greatly enjoyed the film and, while the villains didn't get much character growth, the main heroes certainly did. Throughout the movie their bond with each other grows and changes, along with the audience gradually learning more about each of them and what they've been through as time goes on. I would have loved to see a sequel that focuses on them in the future to find out where their story goes. The ending certainly set up for more movies, but I fear that will not be possible with how poorly it has been rated.

Was Madame Web perfect? No, certainly not. There was a lot that I wanted to see more of, and certain lines that I felt could have sounded smoother. Was it still really good? Absolutely. It was no Lord of the Rings, but it was fun to watch and kept me invested in the story the entire time. It did not deserve such a massive amount of negative reviews, many of which were made before the movie was even released. The reason behind this mass review bombing is simple: misogyny. The main characters are all women and the director is a woman—none of whom are wearing sports bras and short skirts needing a man to swoop in and save them every five minutes. The movie is a perfect display of female empowerment, and people didn’t like that. Many have claimed that Spider-Man is supposed to be a man, while others reduce the main actresses to being sexy and nothing more. Review bombing is happening to more and more amazing films, TV shows, books, and any other form of media for hilariously idiotic reasons like the fact that the main characters aren’t men. If we let those reviews stop the story from being successful, then we’re just giving these trolls exactly what they want. I fear that the damage has already been done when it comes to Madame Web, but that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying this spectacular movie and being on high alert for any other potential cases of gross bigotry ruining an amazing film.