Dakota Johnson, the star of widely panned Spider-Man spin-off Madame Web, isn’t surprised the film wasn’t well-received and isn’t interested in doing another one like it.
When asked by Bustle if the poor reviews bothered her, Johnson said: “Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that this has gone down the way it has.
“It’s so hard to get movies made, and in these big movies that get made — and it’s even starting to happen with the little ones, which is what’s really freaking me out — decisions are being made by committees, and art does not do well when it’s made by committee.
Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that this has gone down the way it has.
“Films are made by a filmmaker and a team of artists around them. You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms. My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not. Audiences will always be able to sniff out bulls**t. Even if films start to be made with AI, humans aren’t going to f**king want to see those.”
Johnson suggested she doesn’t necessarily regret making the film because it was a new experience and allowed her to realise she doesn’t enjoy that type of filmmaking.
“It was definitely an experience for me to make that movie. I had never done anything like it before,” she said. “I probably will never do anything like it again because I don’t make sense in that world. And I know that now.
“But sometimes in this industry, you sign on to something, and it’s one thing and then as you’re making it, it becomes a completely different thing, and you’re like, ‘Wait, what?’ But it was a real learning experience, and of course it’s not nice to be a part of something that’s ripped to shreds, but I can’t say that I don’t understand.” This is something Johnson raised concerns over previously, saying “drastic changes” were made to the script.
She also had harsh words for blue screen filming. “I’ve never really done a movie where you are on a blue screen, and there’s fake explosions going off, and someone’s going, ‘Explosion!’ and you act like there’s an explosion,” Johnson said in January 2024. “That, to me, was absolutely psychotic. I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to be good at all. I hope that I did an okay job’.”
Madame Web followed in the footsteps of other Sony Spider-Man films like Morbius in struggling critically. “Madame Web has the makings of an interesting hybrid — part superhero movie, part psychological thriller — but with a script overcrowded with extraneous characters, basic archetypes, and generic dialogue, it fails the talent and the future of its onscreen Spider-Women,” we said in our 5/10 review.
The commercial reception was not good either, with Madame Web’s $17.6 million breaking records as the worst opening for any Sony Spider-Man movie, including vampire flick Morbius which made just $39.1 million in its three-day debut in 2022. It also became the first Marvel film since Fox’s Fantastic Four reboot to not open at number one.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
