My World Of Flops: Madame Web and the glorious subversiveness of Dakota Johnson

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were financial flops, critical failures, or lack a substantial cult following.

As a third-generation movie star whose grandmother (Tippi Hedren) starred in The Birds and whose mother (Melanie Griffith) and father (Don Johnson) are both famous actors, Dakota Johnson was born beautiful. She was born rich. She was born into a world of fame and wealth. Johnson was also born with zero fucks to give.

Johnson’s ascent to contemporary-folk-hero-speaking-truth-to-power status kicked into high gear during a legendary visit to Ellen where the now-disgraced talk show host complained about not being invited to Johnson’s thirtieth birthday party. The iconoclastic actress broke the Hollywood code of polite silence by insisting that because Ellen gave her so much shit about not being invited to her last birthday, she made sure to ask her this time around.

“Actually, no, that’s not the truth, Ellen. You were,” are Johnson’s exact words. Things grew less awkward from there, but only because it would have been impossible for them to be more uncomfortable. It was a brief exchange on a television show that nevertheless did immeasurable damage to Ellen’s brand as niceness personified while establishing Johnson as a rebellious truthteller willing to call the Hollywood establishment out on its lies and its bullshit.

DeGeneres foolishly doubled down on her insistence that she was not invited to the party. Johnson held her ground and insisted that she invited Ellen, but Ellen did not come. Then, puzzlingly, DeGeneres confronted her publicly on her talk show rather than discuss any other topic.

It’s ironic that Johnson rose to overnight fame playing Anastasia Steele, the heroine of the Fifty Shades Of Grey series and pop culture’s preeminent sexual submissive, because there’s nothing submissive about Johnson’s offscreen persona. The key to Johnson’s star-making performance in Fifty Shades Of Grey is that she played the character’s submissiveness as a manifestation of strength rather than weakness. She gives herself to a wealthy, powerful, dominant partner. That agency defines her as much, if not more, than her submissiveness. If you can survive playing an iconically awful character like Anastasia Steele, you can survive all the bullshit that Hollywood has to offer. That includes playing the lead role in 2024’s Madame Web.

Johnson’s entry into comic book fare was a final nail in the coffin of the superhero boom, which launched in 2008 when Jon Favreau’s Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe that would change film and pop culture. The once-mighty superhero cinematic movement was wheezing, however, when the geniuses at Sony decided to make, in Madame Web, a Spider-Man movie without Spider-Man. That’s what happened with Venom, too, but Venom succeeded in being a Spider-Man movie minus the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler because it was about a cult anti-hero beloved by juvenile delinquents and malcontents.

Madame Web, in sharp contrast, is about an obscure character beloved by no one. Also, in the comic books, Madame Web is a disabled old woman who is in complete control of her powers. Yet, in a movie world newly obsessed with the representation of marginalized minorities, Madame Web makes the puzzling choice to have its heroine be an impossibly attractive, non-disabled young person like pretty much every superhero ever.

Johnson seems like someone who would roll her eyes derisively at the idea of seeing a movie with dialogue like “The spider-venom did have healing properties!” So, the idea of Johnson devoting months of her life to acting in a movie where she delivers lines like that represents a grand cosmic joke. Thankfully, Johnson is in on the joke, and her prickly intelligence and iron will make it apparent that she knows just how ridiculous the movie is and shares our disappointment and confusion. Johnson’s wonderfully independent-minded publicity tour for Madame Web made it clear that the finished project was not what she had signed on for. Johnson spoke vaguely of a fabled “good script” that was cavalierly tossed aside so that Madame Web could be realized onscreen in a manner at once bland and embarrassing.

Johnson plays Cassandra Webb, a paramedic in her early thirties in 2003 whose mother died at the hands of Ezekiel Sims, an adventurer who acquires Spider-Man-like powers from a spider not unlike the one that bit Peter Parker. This leads him to make a Spider-Man-style suit and generally behave like an off-brand, Spirit Halloween, Wish version of Spider-Man, but evil and also an almost impressively terrible character. Ezekiel is haunted by visions of beautiful young women who will eventually murder him. He does not want to be killed, so he sets about finding the women who will ultimately end his sinful existence so that he can end their lives first.

After an accident, Cassandra discovers that she is clairvoyant, but her powers are spotty and random. Sometimes, she can see briefly into the future, but that’s about it. Honestly, at that level, her telekinesis is less a superpower than a party trick. Cassandra barely understands her powers, so she spends the film super-babysitting a trio of teen future Spider-Women. She doesn’t seem at all enthused about the gig.

Instead of sticking with a single obscure comic book character nobody knows or cares about, Madame Web gives us a quartet of super-nobodies with underwhelming beginnings and non-existent futures. Cassandra’s growing powers set her on a collision course with Ezekiel Sims and three teenage girls he wants to kill before they can grow up to be Spider-Women. A bizarrely miscast and misused Sydney Sweeney plays Julia Cornwall, an awkward, inexperienced Catholic schoolgirl and future Spider-Woman. Isabela Merced joins her as Anya Corazon, a smartass skater girl, latchkey kid, and future Spider-Girl. Celeste O’Connor rounds out the quartet of spider-powered women playing Mattie Franklin, a poor little rich girl destined to go into the Spider-Woman business, a booming line of work promising employment for all.

Adam Scott co-stars as Ben Parker, the future utterer of the most sage advice in all comic books. Scott seems to be appearing in the movie ironically, as a goof and a jape rather than an actual job he had to take seriously. He doesn’t want to be here anymore than Johnson does. That makes him the perfect professional partner for her.

When a wise member of the tribe of Spider-People at the film’s core tells Cassandra, “When you take on responsibility, great power will come,” it doesn’t feel like a reversal or a subversion of Uncle Ben’s famous line about how with great power comes great responsibility. Instead, it feels like the filmmakers could not legally use the actual iconic words so they had to substitute something similar.

Johnson is at war with the $100 million blockbuster she’s reluctantly starring in out of a sense of weary obligation rather than enthusiasm or inspiration. We’re on her side. Instead of rooting for Cassandra Web, the character, we’re rooting for Dakota Johnson to completely and deliberately subvert this clattering capitalist contraption. When Cassandra tells her clueless sidekicks, “Believe me or don’t. I don’t care. I didn’t ask to be doing this with you, and I didn’t ask for it to happen to me, either” and “Crazy shit has been happening, and I don’t know why. Stop asking me,” she seems to be speaking for Johnson as well. Cassandra doesn’t want to be a superhero or have superpowers any more than the actress playing her wants to be a superstar or be super-famous. Yet they’re stuck with insane lives of power and privilege all the same.

Madame Web closes with a triumphant Cassandra Web, now in full-on Madame Web form, enthusing guilelessly, “You know the best thing about the future? it hasn’t happened yet.” This is the moment the film has been building towards, with a now blind Cassandra and her teen sidekicks, the Spider-Women, in hideous superhero costumes, ready for action.

It was not to be. Madame Web shocked no one by becoming the latest low-rent superhero movie to flop with critics and audiences. This stinker is an unusual superhero movie in that it is almost wholly devoid of superheroics and an unconventional action movie in that it features minimal action. If we do end up seeing more of Madame Web, and that is a very big if, Dakota Johnson probably won’t play her.

No one is happier about that than Johnson herself. She’s a weary survivor of the superhero boom and bust who had the clairvoyance to foresee what a disaster Madame Web would be before the rest of us had a chance to be disappointed.

Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Fiasco