Madame Web star Dakota Johnson shreds Sony’s latest live-action Marvel movie, saying she’ll never make another film like it again.
Dakota Johnson, who’s routinely taken semi-reserved pot-shots at her ill-received superhero movie Madame Web, is taking off the gloves. Speaking with Bustle, the Fifty Shades of Grey actress described her nightmarish experience while making Madame Web, saying the end product was nothing like what she and the team set out to make.
“It was definitely an experience for me to make that movie,” Johnson told Bustle. “I had never done anything like it before. 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.”
“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,” she added. “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 bullshit. Even if films start to be made with AI, humans aren’t going to fucking want to see those.”
Unfortunately, Dakota’s assessment of Madame Web is spot on. The movie is abysmal, and I say this as a die-hard fan of superhero cinema. The casting ingredients are there, with Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, and Adam Scott being actors capable of delivering stand-out performances. Madame Web fails to take advantage of their talents, presenting a lackluster snoozefest of a film, resulting in arguably the worst superhero film of recent memory, certainly in Sony’s live-action Spider-Verse. Yes, it’s worse than Morbius.
More to come…