Transcript

Taylor: Hello, listeners, and welcome to Sisters Assembled. We are recording this on Valentine’s Day, so happy Valentine’s Day to everyone out there. We just came back from Madame Web because they strangely decided that Valentine’s Day was the perfect day to go see this movie in the middle of the week. Not my choice, but hey, whatever, that’s fine. If you read the title, you know that because we just came back from that movie we are going to be doing our immediate reactions to the film in this episode. As always, I’m going to give Katie the floor first. 

Katie: I actually, I’m not sure how I feel about this movie. Meaning I think when I look at it as a whole, as a movie, I’m like, it was a movie, I watched a movie tonight and period. But as far as anything regarding Sony and Marvel and everything else, I’m like, wow, that was bad. So I think there are two ways to look at it. I mean, if you’re just there to kind of enjoy a movie, it’s fine. It is what it is. I don’t think it’s by any means out here breaking numbers. I mean, that Rotten Tomato score says enough, I think. But if you’re looking at it as a Marvel fan or just anybody in the, I don’t say in the superhero realm, because if you’re a DC fan, you might be used to this level of disappointment but, you know, here we are. This was not good, not good. Not from the Marvel standards, not even for Sony, like we said Morbius was bad, I can’t tell if this was worse. I can’t. 

Taylor: It’s interesting to me that you feel that strongly about it because I do agree with some of your sentiments in the sense that as a movie standalone, with no expectations for a wider universe, I actually enjoyed it. I thought Dakota Johnson was hilarious and very much like her whole awkward persona was just something I related to on so many levels and I loved her.

Katie: that checks for you. 

Taylor: It really does. I mean, I’m not going to lie, I am who I am and I’m almost 26, so at this point it’s pretty much stuck. But I really liked her character, I liked the way she played Cassie. I even like the narrative, honestly. I know a lot of people were making fun of it going into it with the trailer and the whole my mom with the spiders in the Amazon or whatever, but I thought the actual narrative made logical sense. I mean, we’ve watched movies that have been less sensical from Sony in the past, I mean, Morbius comes to mind, like you said, that just truly the plot doesn’t make sense. This, I thought, made narrative sense. I like that it was female led. I like that they really focused a lot on their relationships and their growing bond. I liked the found family theme that came through as well, and I think what I liked about it was it didn’t, yes, Ben and Mary were in it, but it almost didn’t try too hard to connect to everything else. It was very much an origin story of Cassie and turning into Madame Web as we would know her in the comics. So from that perspective, I liked it. However, from what you were saying, the idea of it connecting to a larger universe, the idea that it’s supposed I mean, we know Peter Parker was born in this movie, but it doesn’t do anything to further any storylines. She had no connection to the Multiverse in the real sense that she’s moving from universe to universe. In some ways it’s interesting because you could say that every vision she has is technically a different universe, right? Because every decision that’s made could potentially branch off into a new universe. That’s about as close as we got to the Multiverse and if you listened to our predictions episode, you know that we were expecting this to really connect a lot of things and be an opening for Sony to really explore that in live action. So from that standpoint, it was disappointing, but from a movie that I went and saw, it was enjoyable enough. I think if you temper your expectations, I’ve definitely seen lower quality movies.

Katie: Yeah, I think I struggled with it because to your point, we talked so much about and maybe this was our fault. We really put so much faith in Sony being able to pull something off. At the end of the day, here we are again in the same exact place we’ve been after every Sony movie, with the exception of Venom, really, and Venom 2 only because of the post-credit scene. So, I mean, I think I was most disappointed because it didn’t tie to anything else when I really was like, here you go, Sony, you are making the movie. Even if it’s a crappy movie, it’s got to do something to connect all these other crappy movies that you’ve been making and at least now I feel like I have a direction. Instead, you managed to make an entirely standalone movie, which, okay, that’s a choice. But now we still don’t have any connecting thread between the rest of the crappy movies that have been made and I’m still sitting here like so we have just another one to add to the list. That’s kind of how I feel about it. And I guess part of that is expectation and I can admit to that. We did really go in with that theory, and I think we definitely like my brain was thinking we were going to go that direction. But even as a whole, as a movie, I just was like, who sat down and said, you know what we really should do? Madame Web but then we’re going to have it be a complete standalone and it’s going to tie into nothing, and it’s going to be a blockbuster hit.

Taylor: Well, it’s funny that you bring that up because, to your point, Madame Web is the one character who is perfect for literally being the center of the web. 

Katie: That’s what I mean. 

Taylor: Not only did they do the least for it being a standalone film, but they made an active decision to make her as far from connected as possible. Yes, they had the birth of Peter Parker in this film and managed not to connect it to any of the three Peter Parker’s that we know. I mean, and I was thinking about this afterward, considering all that we know about our Peter Parkers and the world in which they live and the way that their Spider-Men were introduced, right? Everybody’s like, shocked about the fact that there’s a Spider-Man. Yet, there was a Spider-person in New York in the early 2000s, which, you know, I think they said they couldn’t see Ezekiel so whatever.S

Katie: Yeah, but then the three girls become Spider-people. 

Taylor: Exactly and that’s where I was going. Now you have not only the three Spider-Women, but then you see Cassie suited up as well as the full Madame Web, and they are out there doing stuff as Spider-people, fighting the good fight that we see Peter fight later and the world acts like every Peter is new. Which then led me to believe, is this an entirely fourth Peter? 

Katie: That’s what I assumed. I assumed that this pretty much created a whole other, I don’t want to say universe, but essentially universe with different Spider-people, rather than having a Peter Parker or tying it to one of the three that we already know. I also just assumed. Now the only reason I’m okay with that theoretically speaking, is because that could make room, I mean, we’re what, supposed to have these girls become Spider-people within the next ten years, right? So give it roughly 2013, to be fair, that’s also roughly when at least Andrew’s Spider-Man comes onto the scene. So, you know, timeline wise, maybe things match up a little bit, but maybe this is Venom’s universe, maybe this is Morbius’, maybe this is a weird universe that they can’t seem to figure out what they want to do with and who’s Spider-Man is in there. And as everybody’s been begging them to make that Andrews’, maybe it is just a completely separate one at this point. I mean, listen, we all know Sony doesn’t have the vision. Let’s be honest. They aren’t sitting here looking four years in advance and going, these are the movies that lead to this. They’re literally just looking movie by movie and we can tell. As viewers, we can tell and they’re lucky that we even, that they’re in any sort of relationship with Marvel here, or they wouldn’t be getting half the views they’re getting on these movies. It’s all these Marvel fans after things like Venom that are coming and they’re like, well, maybe something is important here, so I should watch it. Therefore they’re sat just like we were sat in that theater tonight on Valentine’s Day. Thank you very much, because that’s how I wanted to spend it alone in a theater, that was enjoyable. And emphasis okay, I have a little beef, guys, emphasis on alone in the theater, because when I tell you I was alone in that theater and then all these horror movies were doing the previews, I had to leave. I sat outside for like the second half of previews because I was genuinely terrified. I’m sitting there alone like, oh my God, I’m going to get murdered. Madame Webb is going to be the reason I die like this is what’s going to happen to me and I was so scared. And then like 15, 20 minutes into the movie, this couple comes in, and I was like, okay, I feel so much better now that I am no longer alone but it was a very traumatizing experience just to watch Madame Web. So I have a lot of beef with this movie at this point. 

Taylor: Wow. You had an experience, I don’t even know what to say. 

Katie: This was like when you didn’t have AC, when you went to watch the one movie and like, you came back and you were like, that was the worst. That was my experience tonight. 

Taylor: Across the Spider-Verse, where I sweated through my sweatshirt.

Katie: It’s always Sony. 

Taylor: Yeah, yeah, but to get us back on track. Yes, you’re right, they don’t have the vision but I do think that I actually prefer it being a fourth Peter, a fourth Spider-Man’s universe because now you’re not mucking up the three that have been established that know one another, that are fully in the MCU, fully canon. You’re not messing with any of that and I think that was something else that we talked about in the predictions is you are doing essentially a prequel to one of the three, not really thinking about the fact that they could just be creating their own universe, which whatever do your own thing, mess about in there, just don’t mess with what we’ve got established. That’s fine. That’s fine. You can do that. I’m okay with it. 

Katie: Yeah, I mean, I agree with that too. At this point, if you’re going to do your own universe, I mean, it’s a choice, of course, that they continue to make that’s almost embarrassing to them to continue to make it. But if you’re going to do it to your point, leave what we know alone. Let us enjoy what Marvel goes and they do with Tom Holland. Leave Andrew and Tobey alone, let them rest in peace with their movies. If you’re not going to make an amazing Spider-Man 3, or you’re not going to tie Andrew into any of this, fine, leave it alone. Create your own crap and in ten years, when all we’re doing is talking about all the amazing Spider-Man, we can ignore it. It can go away. It can never be a part of the conversation again and that’s fine. I’m okay with that. But that’s how I feel right now until they make their next movie, which is what? Kraven?

Taylor: I think Venom’s before Kraven, isn’t it? 

Katie: Okay, then Venom, well ugh God. So Venom 3 will really prove the point because we had him of all people transfer into 616 so this should be interesting. We’ll stand here now and say if it’s it’s own universe, cool, we’re chilling and they’re going to muck that up so bad immediately as soon as we watch Venom 3. 

Taylor: Yeah, I just it’s so jarring for me to go from something that is so meticulously planned, flawed at this stage, but meticulously planned the way the MCU is, to go to something that just seems like they’re throwing paint or splattering something on a wall and seeing what sticks. And yeah, they struck gold with Venom the first one, and they surprised a lot of people. 

Katie: Oh for sure. 

Taylor: I mean, it’s a very solid movie. Tom Hardy is brilliant. It’s hilarious and it warranted a sequel. How they made Woody Harrelson look bad, I mean, it’s a feat. I mean the dude is a gem and you made Woody Harrelson look bad, I just can’t even fathom how they did that. 

Katie: Well and also, and I know I’ve said this before, but I should have pretty much peed my pants out of fear of Carnage and somehow you missed the mark on that and I’m not sure how. 

Taylor: I don’t know how you made Carnage palatable, but they managed to do it where I wasn’t like, to your point, scared out of my mind, like I should have been crying. Carnage scares the living daylights out of me and he has since I was a child so this is like a very old scar. 

Katie: This is a deep cut. 

Taylor: Yeah, like this should have brought up a lot of deep childhood fears and it didn’t. And for someone who’s just casually going to watch the movie, then they must have been like, wow, this is like not even it and that’s, it’s crazy to me. So yeah, they missed the mark on Venom 2, but I think they had this opportunity to do something interesting after Venom. They’re not doing that, they’re just making these weird movies that like don’t fit together because they don’t have a vision. If they had crafted a direction, if they had said, we’re going to do all of these standalone movies that are intros the way the MCU started, that’s fine. But 5 or 6 movies in, I’m losing faith that they’re actually doing that, or that they’re actually working towards something rather than just, again, throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks. 

Katie: Oh for sure and then the kind of circle it all back, as we said, you had the perfect character to connect them all and listen, skipping all the way to the end. Did they set up perfectly for a sequel? They did. Do I have a lot of faith a sequel is going to get made? I mean, I’m not sure because granted, as of right now, it is opening night. There were no early showings, so there’s no first round of audience impressions really coming out. I don’t know how this movie is performing, but telling you, as one of three people in my movie theater this evening, I’m not feeling confident on opening night that this movie is going to perform very well. So I can’t see them putting more money into it, especially not to be that person but you have Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney, who especially Sydney Sweeney, who is an up and coming star. She’s in everything right now. I mean, can you really afford to pay them for a second film if this one absolutely fumbles the bag especially, I mean, who was talking, there was a star recently talking about like a movie that they I think it was like Jacob Elordi talking about the Kissing Booth and how he was like, yeah, I like distance myself from that, whatever. And this at this point, that is Sydney Sweeney’s movie, it’s Madame Web. In five years, when she’s in even more, she’s gonna sit here and be like, yeah, that I did that for a check. I did that for a check because I thought it’d be cool to hang from the ceiling for five seconds. That is going to be the story, because I can’t see how after this, because I can’t see the performance is going to be well, they’re going to do a sequel. Now, if they did a sequel, maybe we connect things there. I just don’t have the confidence. 

Taylor: Yeah, I mean, I don’t even know. I don’t know if I think they’re going to get a sequel. Look, out of all of the properties, as Sony has introduced to us thus far, Venom, Morbius and Madame Web, I don’t need a Venom 3, to be honest. I mean, I don’t even know where you go from here. I know there’s another symbiote and that’s who it is. But like, to me, Carnage is like he’s the guy. So if you fumbled the bag with the guy, I don’t really care to see what you’re going to do for a number three, especially because if you think about it narratively, like the first movie and the second movie, essentially have the same plot, just different symbiotes. Which I’m sure they’re just going to rehash again, for number three. I don’t obviously need a sequel to Morbius, they wasted Jared Leto. I mean, okay, I don’t I can’t even I can’t go back there, it’s just like emotionally damaging for me. But then you look at this one, I’m like, I could get down with a second one for this one, because I did actually like the characters, I thought they were interesting, and even though it is so standalone, it’s an enjoyable enough movie that I’d be like, all right, cool. If you’re going to find a smart, intelligent way to connect them, that doesn’t ruin what has already been established and who knows who’s going to be established by Marvel in the next few years, the MCU proper, in the next few years, or even Across the Spider-Verse, you never know what opportunities that’s going to open up. I mean, heck, in the same way that we saw Tobey and Andrew in the second one, maybe we’ll see Cassie and all the ladies in a live action clip in the third one. Not knowing what’s going to happen in the wider comic book world of Marvel in the next few years, I would actually be open to a second one, because again, it’s not the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Did it check the boxes of a shared universe? No but like, you know, temper your expectations, I guess. 

Katie: Yeah. I don’t think it’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I just don’t think as a whole it was great. I want to kind of get more into some of the details and actually what I want to start with is Cassie herself, mainly because I was so intrigued on how Sony was going to handle this because she’s a mutant in the comics. For those of you who haven’t had a chance to read one of our latest blog posts, I did a whole thing giving kind of a snapshot on who she is, and she’s actually a mutant, very prominent, a very prominent mutant. She lives through House of M, all of that. So I was so intrigued because obviously we knew she wasn’t going to be a mutant, Sony doesn’t have the rights to them. I mean, heck, Marvel only just got the rights back to them. 

Taylor: Speaking of rights, did anybody catch Julia’s last name not being Carpenter? 

Katie: Yup.

Taylor: I’m sorry, what? 

Katie: I was very confused. 

Taylor: I was like, does she change it as she gets older? I wonder if they don’t have the rights to Julia Carpenter? 

Katie: I don’t know.

Taylor: That irked me to no end.

Katie: No, I was very annoyed because as soon as she said, I don’t even know what the other name was, but as soon as she said it, I was like, that’s not you. 

Taylor: Yeah, I know, I was so aggravated, go on with your thing but I just when you were talking about rights, I was like, this is the perfect moment, we’re going to talk about this. 

Katie: Yeah, no, I get it. But we knew going into the Sony wasn’t going to be able to make Madame Web, Cassie, a mutant. It wasn’t going to be able to happen, which is why that whole backstory with the spiders was a whole thing, because that does not happen in the comics. This is totally off the cuff. Sony’s just pulling this out of the writers room like that is totally what is going down here. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it, I didn’t mind, honestly, I didn’t think the weirdest part of it for me, I was fine with the whole her mom died during childbirth. She had gotten bit by the spider before Cassie was fully born so in the meantime, Cassie was able to get some of the special powers the spiders had. Then on top of that, it cured her of what she was supposed to have and I don’t remember the name, but she has it in the comics, she’s born with it. She’s also born blind, which I do appreciate the ending. I thought the ending, they ended up very comic book accurate. I appreciated that, I was a big fan. 

Taylor: I actually think it reminds me a little bit of the ending of No Way Home, in the sense that it’s an origin story that brings you back to the character’s roots, right? Obviously we know Tom’s Spider-Man had a little bit of a different path to the more traditional Spider-Man storylines than we saw with Tobey and Andrew, and this kind of reminded me of that. It’s like, okay, you took a version of the character that’s maybe not the stereotypical version that everybody thinks of when they think of Spider-Man, or in this case, Madame Web, but you were able to by the end of the movie, or in that case, the trilogy, to bring us back to, all right, now we’re kind of on the line of comic book accuracy, so I actually like that too.

Katie: Yeah, I didn’t mind the ending, I actually quite enjoyed it. As soon as she got hit with the firework, I was like, ooh. And then I didn’t realize she was also paralyzed, which also, I was going to say that excited me, not that she was paralyzed, but the fact that it was tying to her being obviously more to her comic book character. But anyway, back to the beginning. I didn’t mind the whole story with her mom. I didn’t really actually like the whole weird spider people thing. That, you lost me on that part. That was just like, oh, okay and honestly, if I’m going to be completely honest and lay my cards out right here, right now, if you took that out, it’s the same movie.

Taylor: Other than you needed someone to save her mother long enough for Cassie to be born.

Katie: Sure, but at the end of the day, the spider could have bit ter out on the forest floor, maybe somebody in the camp survives long enough to help Cassie be born, you know what I mean? Like, there are other ways without having to include a whole tribe of spider people, that now is a whole thing that now exists and I don’t really know what to do with that information. 

Taylor: Yeah. See, I think the reason that I’m not as fazed by that is and we touched on this a little bit in the prediction, there are elements of spider people’s origins that are mystical. It’s not this exact storyline, but it has to do with like two sisters and their development of the Multiverse and how they choose to like represent it and one made it a web and the other made it not a web. And then there there are people and their followers were constantly in in battle with one another so you had, like the followers of the spider, then the people of the some sort of bee, I think. I don’t remember anymore. I did this research and I like left my brain. I was like, this is way deeper in Spider-Man lore than I ever wanted to go. Anyway, I say all this to say there is some mystical elements to it, ancient elements to the origin of Spider-people’s powers. So that’s why I was like, all right, it kind of feels like a nod to what can be a very dense, very deep layer of all of this and maybe they’re just kind of simplifying it so we don’t have to quite go that far.

Katie: Yeah, maybe. I think it doesn’t come across that way, especially and my favorite thing to do, especially lately, I’m sure you guys have been hearing me do it is kind of taking that step back from the people who are heavily involved in Marvel, and kind of trying to look at it from people who are just going to see this movie. It is great to have fans and I said it earlier, if Sony was not making Marvel adjacent movies, they would not have 75% of the people at their movies that they do. It’s just a fact. There are a lot of people who are Marvel fans seeing these movies, because we don’t know what they could connect to. Again, when you have Venom 2, pull in what Venom 2 did, well, then you feel like you need to go see these movies. Regardless, if I was the average everyday Joe going to see Madame Web on Valentine’s Day because that’s the choice, I think I’d be more confused on why this tribe just suddenly existed, especially if you know anything about Spider-Man. You can know the base knowledge of Spider-Man and just be there to see a spider sort of verse movie and now all of a sudden you’re like, there is a whole tribe of people with Spider-Man like powers, and we’re just ignoring that. Like, that just happened. 

Taylor: I see what you’re saying I do. As a casual fan, it would be maybe a little deeper than most people want to go. 

Katie: Yeah, like I think maybe it’s simplified for us, if that was the thought process, I think you’re not wrong there. It could be a very easy simplification for a complicated storyline, for even the biggest of fans. However, for your every day Joe, I think you got too complicated. I think you went too far into the weeds of something that didn’t really need to exist. I really didn’t need that part of the storyline to tell the rest of the story.

Taylor: Yeah, I mean, I guess in its defense, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here. You did need someone to act as that kind of more wise figure to help Cassie hone her powers. And considering her mother didn’t survive her birth, it is harder to understand that because the only other person who’s really been exposed to the venom if you take out the spider people tribe is Ezekiel, who clearly has no reason nor desire to help her. So I think from a narrative standpoint, you did kind of need someone to be almost like the narrator and to fill in some of the blanks for Cassie so that she could go from, I have these weird powers and my mom may be involved to I’m going to embrace them. I’m going to learn how to use them and then use them to defeat the villain, find my found family and we’re going to build a unit of super powered ladies that’s going to save New York. So I do think from that perspective, too, you kind of needed someone to bridge that gap for both Cassie and the audience. 

Katie: I totally agree, I definitely that character is important in all superhero movies, and so I can get on board with that. I just think the way they did it, it’s almost like you knew that’s who they were and I don’t like that, you know? I want to sit here and have characters fleshed out enough that I’m not sitting there like, oh, that’s the mentor person who’s going to help her hone in on her powers, because that’s what that felt like. You knew who they were there for, and why they were written in and that was really it. 

Taylor: I can’t believe I’m going to use him in a positive example, but that’s actually Odin. He’s Loki and Thor’s father, but he may also be the first person to say the word Infinity Stones, or show us Infinity Stones in the entire Infinity Saga, if I’m remembering correctly.

Katie: I mean, yeah, but his character does a lot more than just do that. 

Taylor: But that’s what you’re saying is he’s not, oh, I’m the wise character who’s saying that. 

Katie: Oh, you’re saying he’s fleshed out okay. I thought you were arguing against. 

Taylor: I’m saying he’s a perfect example of what it should be. He’s a full character on his own. He has his own storylines, but then he also doubles as I’m going to give you some really important exposition about what’s going to happen in 9 or 10 years of the culmination of this phase. Whereas to your point, the spider tribe person was very much transparently, I’m here to explain this to you, and we don’t have no idea what his name was, we have no idea what his background is, only that he was there at Cassie’s birth and then again to help her 30 years later. So yeah, there is definitely a difference between a fully fleshed out character and someone who is literally only there for narrative explanation purposes. 

Katie: Yeah, for sure. That’s definitely what I think I felt here was I knew who this character was and what they were representing, what the point of them was. I think that took me out a little bit because I just was like, oh, well, okay, this guy is going to help her do what she’s got to do, tie into her past, whatever has to happen here for her to go back and us get to the final battle. Then in the meantime, like, I’m going to be honest, guys, I was pretty bored most of this movie, I was fairly bored. I was texting Taylor on my watch like I was sitting there and I was like, dude, like I am not having it right now. And it was mainly because the beginning part, I’m like, okay, where are the girls? We see them here and there, we see them here and there, I’m like, just get to the point where they’re all together. They finally do. They felt like there was a lot of story and a lot of story and a lot of story and I was like, oh my God, is anything going to happen? And then every once in a while, Ezekial would show up and attack, and then that would only last about 30s and then it’d just be more story and more story and more story, more story and I was like, okay. Then we get to the final battle and I was like, thank God because one we were at a final battle and two, that means it’s almost over. I honestly, it was more boredom, and I think that’s kind of why I didn’t love it was I just felt like I was like, wow, this just keeps going and yet nothing’s happening. 

Taylor: Okay, interesting. I think that’s a valid, you know, if you’re looking at it through a lens of a typical superhero movie, I think that’s valid. I think I was reading or I saw an article earlier that was like, this may be the worst superhero film ever made, which I think is a stretch.

Katie: When Morbius is right there and The Flash is right there?

Taylor: I haven’t seen the remake of the Fantastic Four, but I’m pretty sure that they said that about that.

Katie: Oh when that’s right. I have, and that was bad. 

Taylor: So I mean, let’s put some things in perspective here, people. The worst superhero movie ever made? I think that’s that’s a little bit excessive. 

Katie: Although I could argue as a superhero movie, theoretically it could be the worst because it really didn’t belong in a superhero movie genre. Not yet. I think it will get there, but I don’t think it deserved to be considered a superhero genre because it didn’t really feel like we were superheroing the entire movie until like the last five minutes. 

Taylor: That was my point. You were saying, all right I needed more action. Got it, cool, get it. I think for me, when I was prepping for our predictions episode, I was reading articles about the movie and Dakota Johnson did an interview where she was saying this isn’t a superhero movie in your traditional sense, it’s a psychological thriller. So that actually, I think helped me going in to kind of have that perspective and understand that that’s how she viewed the film, because then I wasn’t disappointed by the lack of major fighting set pieces because I was like, oh, it’s actually more about relationships in the mind and her development than it is about these like, crazy fight scenes. So yes, it doesn’t fit perfectly into the superhero genre. It very much fits kind of as an addendum or as a take on a superhero genre but I think if you view it from that lens, it’s not bad. And I think if you like, like a psychological type thriller this could kind of be in your wheelhouse.

Katie: To me, that was Dakota Johnson trying her best to save everybody’s expectations, if I’m being honest, because and I only say that because at the end of the day, Sony knew what they were doing when they were marketing this movie. There is a reason every clip of the three girls of them suited up is in the trailer. There’s a reason that happens. And then what do we get? Maybe if we’re lucky, a minute of them actually being suited up because the entire movie they are not yet their Spider-Woman counterpart. I didn’t see that interview, and maybe if I had, I would have felt differently but I give her the credit for trying to save the expectations, because that’s truly what it seemed like saying that is doing. You were able to go into it with a different thought process because you weren’t fully looking at it as a superhero movie. For me, you’re marketing to me specifically and to other superhero nerds out there that this is a superhero movie. That we are getting somebody like Sydney Sweeney suited up as a Spider-Woman, and I was looking very much forward to it. I thought she looked cool in the whole 30s I saw of it, but we didn’t get almost any of it in the real film. We don’t even see them get their powers. I think that’s the other thing is, even if at the end we would have at least seen them in some way, shape or form, like I thought I was theorizing during the movie because I felt like I had a lot of time on my hands. I thought that maybe Ezekiel would accidentally give them their powers, and he would be the creator of his own demise. I thought that would be a very interesting way to go about it, because we don’t know how the three of them get their powers, at least as far as Sony is going to go. I really thought that would be cool with the whole poison thing, I was like, maybe there’s something in their genes that if he touches them with the poison instead of killing them, it activates something and that’s how they get their powers, like he almost transfers it over to them. I thought that was where we were going to go, and I would have been fine if they never even suited up or anything, but we knew we had superheroes on our hands, not superheroes that are going to come in the next ten years.

Taylor: Yeah, I actually had that same theory when I was watching the movie that that’s how they were going to get their powers, because I do think it is kind of strange that we aren’t going to get to see that. Now, granted, it is called Madame Web, I mean, Cassie’s the main character. It’s about her evolution, her transformation, her character development. Does that mean we don’t get some sort of Sydney Sweeney spinoff? At some point we get to see an Anya spin off, we get to see a Mattie spin off. Do we get these? You know, maybe. Do they get their own together? Now that they know that they’re kind of this found family, they’re clearly spending a lot of time together and they will over the next ten years. So maybe there’s some way that we get to see a movie of just them and Cassie is more of a background character than she was in this one. I don’t know what their plans are. I mean, Amy Pascal has said that the next two films are going to be Across the Spider-Verse and Tom’s Spider-Man 4, and then they’re talking about a live action Miles Morales, which is why I clicked on the link of the article in the first place. But if those are the next 2 to 3 movies that they’re really focused on, it’s going to be some time before we can even talk about any other Sonyverse movies but they’re not totally off the table. And I like these characters. Like, I think everybody did a good job of portraying their characters. They’re likable characters, they’re interesting, and I like them as a unit. I like their dynamics together. Maybe that’s the sequel, maybe it’s less of a Madame Web 2 and more of a, I don’t know, Spider-Women of New York, I don’t know what you call it, whatever. Maybe that’s what they do instead, I don’t know, but I do think that you can’t just go in with a massive time jump, I mean, I guess you can I don’t know, I just I’m confused about the direction of Sony in general after this. I’m just confused. 

Katie: I’m just confused on the thought process of doing a movie set in 2003. That’s really where I’m stuck. 

Taylor: It is so fascinating, though, the way that they used that time as such a narrative driver. Like, if you think about it, Katie, you were like two years old, I was like five. So neither one of us was like really aware in a mature enough sense of like understanding what that time was like. But think about it in today’s like, perspective and I thought about this a lot during the movie. They leave Cassie to go to the diner and she has no idea where they are, and she can’t just text them. She was late and she couldn’t just text them updates and I was like, oh my God, this is like such a weird thought or even the fact that, and I don’t know if anybody else caught this, the whole fact that they were using the NSA spy program, which in 2003 was in its infancy and still very much a secret. Think about how we think about it in today’s culture in America, what the perception is of that, because it was something that was hidden from the American people for so long and done very much on the DL, without anybody really knowing the extent to which the American public was being surveilled and the scandal that that caused, and then for them to use that as a plot driver in 2003, because nobody understood how powerful something like that could be when technology was really just starting to advance. I actually thought that was probably the most brilliant thing that they did in the film, was use that time period in the way that they did. 

Katie: Oh, I agree, I mean, even down to I think it was Mattie who had a cell phone and it wasn’t even them having to be like, get rid of it, I heard that they can track these. It was actually watching Julia and Anya be like, whoa, you have one of those? That’s so cool. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here holding my Apple phone on my lap, with my Apple Watch on my wrist and I’m like, oh yeah, there was totally an age where you weren’t constantly connected to people. That’s weird, because to Taylor’s point, I was two years old in 2003, guys. I am sitting here at a ripe 22. I barely remember an age where there weren’t iPhones or iPods or any of that crap. I really don’t remember much. I still remember my mom bringing home her first iPhone. I was in fourth grade. She picked me up from a friend’s house and she was like, look what I got. She said, you can get one game on this phone. I was in fourth grade, so keep that in mind, ripe age of what, eight, nine? Maybe? This is just so natural to a lot of people. I loved watching it. I think it changed the perspective of the story so much, especially even the surveillance could only go so far. As soon as they were out of the city, they weren’t finding them any more because not every place had cameras. Not every place had people who were on their phones constantly that could ping signals, because I’ll betcha in today’s day of age, that would have been on a Snapchat story those three girls dancing up on that table.

Taylor: I was just seeing the same thing. It would have been all over some sort of social media, which would have been scanned by that program, and they would have been found in five seconds. 

Katie: That’s what I mean. It was very interesting how they used it, and it made sense all of a sudden that narratively I was like, well, this is why they had to do it, because you couldn’t have done this movie in 2023, 24, wherever they were going to set it, you couldn’t have done it. It just wouldn’t have been possible because you would have been able to find these girls way quicker than you did in 2003. 

Taylor: Yeah, I just thought that whole use of technology, or lack thereof, using the political climate that was existing in 2003, the lack of public knowledge about certain activities of the government. I just thought that was absolutely brilliant, fascinating from like a historical perspective. I’m a huge history buff, so I love thinking about times like that and and how history really affects it, and how our perception of knowing how the story ends in that sense affects our perception of that film or how it’s used in that film. I just that, to me was like one of the most interesting parts. I just remember thinking, you know, sitting there in the film and thinking, wow, that’s really cool and that’s actually that’s a masterstroke in storytelling right there. 

Katie: It definitely was, I enjoyed that. But I want to go back, you said something about the cast and how you thought they all did very well. I do agree with that sentiment, I share that. I thought there were a few moments I think the script left them, left them high and dry. That’s not their fault. As the actresses that they are, they did well with what they were given. You can’t help if that’s not always the most well written thing. I mean, we’ve had some of that happen in Marvel too, where it’s just like, well, you know, you know, this actor’s great. You can’t help it the whole script just went and flew away from them. I will say, and this might be a personal thing, the guy who played Ezekiel said that was just wasn’t hitting for me there. He just felt and I don’t know if it was like his voice or what or how he talked, like just the way he enunciated things, I’m not sure but every time he was talking, it felt like he was dubbed in.

Taylor: It didn’t match.

Katie: Yeah. It just everything was off and it was funny because I’m not sure how this happened, just put it all to my trauma, to Madame Web but I ended up in a movie that actually had captions, which is ironic because one I’ve never seen that, but two I love captions. At home, all my stuff has captions on because half the time and I can hear, but I just like, can’t process the words sometimes. So it was nice, like, I do like to be able to read along. I actually enjoyed it because it allowed me to know half of the time what he was actually saying, but it just yeah, it didn’t match all the time. It’s like he truly was dubbed in and I’m thinking of like, I remember the one time I was watching Squid Game when it first came out and I said to my roommates, hey guys, let’s try the dub, like instead of us reading the English stuff, let’s try the American dubbed in whatever and it was obviously atrocious. You are stressed out watching this because it’s just sounds so bad. That is what it sounded like, though. It sounded like they American dubbed in him speaking English as if he wasn’t speaking English but he was.

Taylor: Yeah, no, there were definitely times and there’s one example in particular and I can’t remember what it was, but I remember at least once in the film, thinking his lips aren’t matching the words coming out of his mouth, almost like, okay, I’m going to get all audio editing nerdy here, because in case you guys don’t know, I’m the one who edits the podcast. It’s almost like the audio track got shifted a little off the video track, and it was just like, not quite there and I was like, oh my God. Because sometimes actors do go back and they VO stuff that they did when they were filming, because maybe audio didn’t quite pick up on the right mic or whatever when they were doing it live. That’s a very standard practice so that’s that wouldn’t be strange. But it did almost look like somebody bumped the number and was like, oh, shoot and now it’s like, not right. I wouldn’t be surprised if people go back, you know, in a week or something and they have perfectly matched up audio and video. But for him, there were definitely places where I was like, he must have gone back and redone some of the VOs again, a standard practice, but somebody muffed it and they didn’t match it correctly.

Katie: I wasn’t sure at first if it was just his cadence and how he talks, because I was like, this just doesn’t, every time he talked, it was it felt almost like nail scratching to me on a chalkboard because it just didn’t, it wasn’t right, something wasn’t right and I could feel it, and I knew it wasn’t right. Then by the end, I was like, no, it’s just things are not matching, like they aren’t going the right way. His voice sometimes didn’t sound right either. I don’t know if you caught that too, but sometimes his voice just sounded off. I was like, I’m just so confused of what’s happening. I actually hated whenever he’d be on the screen talking, just because I was like, something’s not right here, and it’s aggravating me. 

Taylor: Yeah, it almost felt like the audio levels were different, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. So that’s why, again, like, I feel like something must have happened when he was filming his scenes and they went back and said, okay, dub it to get better audio quality and then they didn’t fix it. Or more likely, they use some of the pieces of the original audio mixed in with some of the dub, and then they didn’t level out the levels, and you could definitely tell that there was a difference between him standing in a booth and the audio quality there, and him standing on a soundstage with whatever mics they’re using. It definitely, no, his audio, you’re right. Between the not matching and the levels being all over the place, it was very jarring because there were a couple times I was like, my spidey senses are going off here, something is wrong and that should not be taking me out of the film but it did. 

Katie: Oh, it definitely did. And then on top of that, just to talk about him as a villain as a whole, you know, I thought it was weak. I thought his reasoning was pretty weak. And I think what I struggled with was, here’s this dude who’s been having this dream about these girls killing him forever and ever and ever. He seems to have continuously been having this nightmare. That’s what we’re told, okay? He wants to go after them. Cool. I guess I just don’t really feel like he was fleshed out because I was like, what have you been doing for 30 years? That was a big question. 

Taylor: Well, he was waiting for the technology to get better. He says that.

Katie: No no no no no no no but it’s not about like I mean as a whole, what is this man up to? Like what has he been doing for 30 years since he stole that spider other than the fact that I know he let it bite him. Like, what has he been doing? 

Taylor: I mean, clearly amassing wealth. 

Katie: Well, that’s what I mean. Like, you could tell he is well off and that’s why I even more was confused because I was like, I kind of think I need like if we didn’t start back with him killing Cassie’s mom, I’m not sure I would have cared as much. But because this is a character that clearly we saw back in the what? 80s? 70s? We saw him and now we’re seeing him later on, I need to understand a little bit more of his character development to understand how we get where we get as a whole. It just felt very jarring to me because I was like, okay, like, I guess this random dudes having some dream about his death, and so he’s going to go kill them all. That seems like a weak reasoning. Maybe if I knew a little bit more about what he’d been doing the past 30 years, how he amassed this wealth, how he’s been using his abilities. That I was super curious about. He has a suit so what the heck else has he been doing? He clearly has been out doing stuff. You don’t just randomly have a suit made to go kill three girls. He had that thing ready, he’s been using it. So I guess there was like a lot of open ended questions that because they didn’t really bother to write his character out more than just, I don’t want to die, I’ve achieved so much, even though we know none of his achievements, then it’s like, okay, well, that’s a weak villain in my perspective, I didn’t think he had a lot going for him. 

Taylor: I don’t disagree, I think that can be solved super easily in that scene where he is in Cassie’s dream, and when he first explains to her about the poison and about all of his reasoning and the girls getting their powers and all of that. Literally give him four more lines where he says, you know, he knows at this point, I think he knows that, you know, she’s the daughter of the woman that he knew and tried to kill. So let him give the backstory of I knew your mom, I stole the spider, I let it bite me, I did X, Y, and Z for all these years. I use my power to gain wealth, I was cursed because I saw the spider, and now I’m trying to break the curse by killing these girls so they don’t get to kill me first. In my head, his curse is I have to live my death every night without being able to stop it, right? Without the ability to change the future and that’s his curse for stealing the spider like the Spider Tribe man explained to Cassie. That makes sense to me, but only because I had to fill in the blanks. 

Katie: Exactly.

Taylor: Yeah. Give him four more lines to let him do it and don’t make the audience work so darn hard. 

Katie: Yeah, I just think they really didn’t, they just said this was another character to me, that going back to what we were saying with the the spider tribe, the spider people, and this was worse because this is your villain, but it was like, here’s your villain and that was it. And listen, I get it, sometimes we’ve been spoiled with Marvel. We’ve gotten some really, really amazing villains, villains that you root for, that you want to win and I get it not every villain’s going to be like that. Dar-Benn, we really liked her, I know that’s kind of an up in the air kind of thing. There are a lot of people who didn’t think she was very fleshed out, but we enjoyed her for one movie villain. At the end of the day, Killmonger still always got to be the highest up there, but she had good reasoning. We understood her, we saw who she was. Okay, maybe some people could argue that was surface level. I don’t care like to me, I understood why she was doing every single thing she was doing. I guess to me, in this movie specifically, I was just stuck on the only reason I see you doing what you’re doing is because you don’t want to die and it’s like, that’s just so boring. That’s really the whole impetus of all of this is because you don’t want to be murdered in ten years. That’s boring as all heck to me when there’s nothing else being given to me, I have no reason to feel for him and be like, oh, I wouldn’t want to die in ten years either. It’s like, well, but why? I don’t feel any emotion towards you because I know nothing about you. 

Taylor: Yeah, he’s very reminiscent of something like, a Malekith in that he so one know and so singularly focused and just absolutely like, completely flat. Yeah. You know when you have, to your point, villains like Killmonger, Gorr, Dar-Benn, Thanos, and then you roll out with in the Ezekial Sims, who’s a real fleshed out character in the comics, has a backstory, has a history. You roll out an Ezekial Sims, who’s about as flat as Katie’s old Harry Styles cut out, and you’re like, why should I be invested in your story at all? 

Katie: Yeah, exactly. I think my cut out was actually less flat at this point. 

Taylor: I wouldn’t argue differently. 

Katie: Yeah, I mean, it was hard for me. I think that’s also where I struggled. I didn’t struggle with any of the protagonists. I was fine with the girls. Like I said, I think the script ran from them sometimes, again, not their fault. I also there were a few times that it kept throwing me off because Sydney Sweeney kept saying Cassie and I was like, why are you saying Cassie? Then I was like, oh, you’re not Cassie in this because she’s Cassie Euphoria. So I kept getting very thrown off for a second, and I was confused on who everybody kept calling Cassie. That’s when I first saw Sydney Sweeney so I’m very stuck on her being that role, and it threw me off a few times, but I thought they did fine. The villain fell so flat for me. I mean, it felt like the rest of the movie was running away and the villain was just like jogging, trying to keep up. That’s truly what it felt like. 

Taylor: You know what else was really bad? And I do want to say, I think that’s the writing on the villain. I think the actor’s fine like I think he did a perfectly good job. He was unfortunately not a well-written character, and I do feel bad for him because I’ve never seen him in anything else, at least to my knowledge, so it’s like, oh man, this is your first probably one of your first really big roles, at least, from my perspective. Again, I haven’t seen him in anything else and this is my first impression of you. And like, that’s a bummer because, like, there’s only so much you can do with a character who’s only half written. But my biggest qualm, honestly, was the absolutely laughable CGI that was so bad I almost cried. I was like, how did this make it out of a major studio? I know we’ve had our problems with Marvel over the last couple of years, but this was so bad I actually giggled. I was like, wow, wow. 

Katie: Yeah and not all of it, but, you know, the 30s, the girls actually got to be suited up like the end when the four of them are like in their suits and everything. I did let out chuckle and then I had to remember I was joined by a couple later on in the movie then and I was not alone even though I’d started the movie alone, but I did, I truly laughed because I was like, did you CGI the suits on them? Like, what is wrong with this picture?

Taylor: Every time Cassie was under water?

Katie: Oh, that looked so crappy.

Taylor: I literally wanted to walk out of the theater. I was like, oh my God, why did I pay money for you to half do CGI? 

Katie: Dude, I don’t know, because they put all their money into making sure the explosions and stuff worked, because I’ll tell you, I will say, if there’s one thing I can say super positively about this movie, that freakin scene in the warehouse with the fireworks going off and Ezekiel’s jumping forward, flying through the air towards the girls, that is the best scene in the entire movie. It is flawlessly done. Chills.

Taylor: When he gets taken out by that firework, when he’s jumping after them, and he gets phh sorry for all of you who I just did that in my mic, but like, he just and you also can’t see my hands doing motions, but he gets sideswiped basically by a firework, that actually I actually thought Ezekiel looked really good in all of his scenes.

Katie: I mean, I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t, yes, I agree, and I also like the entire last sequence I felt looked pretty freaking good. 

Taylor: Like I said, it’s really my thing was the underwater. 

Katie: Oh, that’s why I think they put their entire budget to making sure when things were blowing up, they looked good, but otherwise everything else looked crappy.

Taylor: Well, and then you compare it and I know this isn’t fair, but I’m going to do it anyway. Compare it to what we got in Wakanda Forever, where we had entire sequences in an underwater society. And it literally looked so beautiful I wanted to cry from happiness, not sadness. This made me want to cry from sadness. She literally looked like a clay doll. It was so bad. I was like, are we back in like, I don’t even know. Star Wars didn’t even look this bad in like the early 2000 when they were starting to experiment with blue and green screens. Why? Just because it’s set in 2003 doesn’t mean we need to be using 2003 technology over here. Like what is going on Sony? You let this come out to market, really? 

Katie: Yeah. The water was bad and like I said, any time the girls actually were suited up also looked so bad and I couldn’t I mean, I still can’t really figure out why because again, unless they CGIed the suits on them, which maybe they did, because at the end of the day, why make these costumes for them to spend how much time in them, you know? So maybe they did. Maybe they just sat there and had I know Tom sometimes wears the…

Taylor: The mocap suit. 

Katie: Yeah, to do all his movements in rather than the Spider-Man suit but he still has Spider-Man suits that he does wear. Maybe that’s what they did and they just didn’t look right. I don’t know, but I just keep thinking of that final scene, and it looks like somebody who kind of knows somewhat what they’re doing with Photoshop, but just enough that you’re like, it’s not good, I could tell you photoshopped it. 

Taylor: Yeah. Honestly, that was one of the biggest detractors for me because again, I had my expectations pretty low. I’m actually I’m pleased with the expectations I went in with because it allowed me to come out and be like, I’ve seen worse, this isn’t a bad movie, but the CGI, I mean, that knocked it down a few points. I sat in there and I was like, this one’s getting noted on the podcast. Then it just kept happening and I was like, I have to talk about this on the show, or I’m going to explode because this is some of the worst CGI. Like even worse, in my opinion, than that scene in Moon Knight where he’s driving in the car. You all know what we’re talking about. It’s that awful scene, this was worse than that.

Katie: And it’s so sad because I really do love Moon Knight, but that was bad and we both clocked that. I remember when we recorded that episode, it was like the ice cream truck right on on the cliff sort of thing. On the side of the mountain he’s driving and oh, oh, that was so bad because I remember us both being like, Marvel, what is happening right now?

Taylor: This was worse. 

Katie: Oh, for sure, but that was bad. That was one of my moments of sadness from as a marvel fan. I was like, wow, yikes. But yeah, this definitely this takes the cake, I think. I’m trying to think of other moments Sony has had that have been pretty crappy. Ironically, they do the symbiotes pretty well.

Taylor: Yeah, actually I love the transformation from Eddie to Venom.

Katie: And even all the fight scenes and stuff like those are done very well. 

Taylor: I’m sure there is some crap in Morbius. 

Katie: Oh, I know, I’m trying to pick my brain, but I’ve only seen that movie once when I had to and I refused to see it again.

Taylor: I mean, same, and we’re going on two years for that so over and out on the Morbius train. But now that we’re comparing it to the worst CGI that we’ve ever seen, I think we might have to call it a wrap on our reactions for Madame Web. Make sure that you stick with us for future coverage for all things MCU. Katie will take us out and give us a little bit more specifics about what is exactly coming down the pike but if you’re excited to hear any of our future coverage, make sure that you subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and bookmark the website, because we’ve got lots of updates and goodies coming out on there so you can stay up to date with all things Sisters Assembled. 

Katie: You guys can also give us a follow on Twitter at SisAssembledPod and Instagram and Threads at Sisters Assembled. Also YouTube, go ahead and subscribe also at Sisters Assembled, that’s where you can find all of our Sisters Scoops full episodes as those are coming out as well. And in relation to our Sisters Scoop for this week. Next week, our podcast episode is going to be all about the Bob Iger announcement that Marvel is going to be doing a lot more sequels than new heroes in the coming future. We are going to kind of give a little more information on that, and then we’ll be picking some of our own heroes that we’re excited for sequels and maybe argue, who knows? It’s always fun when we have an argument, but we always end up agreeing and it’s kind of annoying. Either way, if you haven’t seen Madame Web, well, I’m not sure we gave you many reasons to go see it, but maybe wait for it to come on streaming and you can watch it for free. If you have seen it, well, good for you, glad that you did. That’s all I got to say about that. In the meantime, make sure you guys are keeping up with all new content as it comes out as Marvel just blew your mind, so let’s talk about it.