Oh, what a tangled web we’ve woven. Sony’s latest entry into its Spider-Man Universe, Madame Web, opened this week to dismal reviews and pessimistic box office prospects. I’m not here to defend the film. But I am here to take issue with the discourse surrounding the movie in recent weeks. It seems it’s no longer enough to simply say, “I don’t think this movie looks good,” or “I couldn’t stand watching this.” Even “I hated it” would do just fine. But we’ve gotten to a place where we have to misconstrue, manipulate, project and create conspiracies around films like this one.
When the press tour for Madame Web began at the start of the year, lead actress Dakota Johnson was placed under such scrutiny, that it became an absurdist tale of how clicks and engagement are farmed. One of the earliest examples is a quote she gave to Entertainment Weekly about working in front of a blue screen, in which she said, “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. 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!’ But I trusted [director S.J Clarkson]. She works so hard, and she has not taken her eyes off this movie since we started.”
Immediately websites ran with headlines stating “Dakota Johnson Doubts Madame Web Will Be Good’ or “Dakota Johnson Says Making Madame Web was Absolutely Psychotic,” and every negative variation of those headlines you could think of. In the quote, it’s clear she’s talking about how she’s never been part of an acting process like this and didn’t know if her performance would be good in terms of working with those unfamiliar elements. In many cases, the following sentences of that quote, in which Johnson praises Clarkson, were conveniently omitted as they didn’t fit the story the writer or website wanted to convey. But the narrative Johnson hated being in Madame Web caught fire, and as an increasingly headline-driven culture, readers and other entertainment journalists latched onto the idea, finding their own threads to spin into a narrative built on nothing.
The web became increasingly tangled when keyboard detectives playing at Columbo remembered that in Johnson’s Instagram post announcing her involvement in Madame Web, since deleted along with years of other posts not related to Madame Web, she’d tagged both Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios. This led to the conclusion that she must have been tricked into thinking she was joining the obvious pinnacle of filmmaking, the MCU, and not, heaven forbid a Sony Spider-Man film. This tagging ‘discovery’ that would best even the great Sherlock Holmes himself, incited the absurd conclusion that a 34-year actress who has spent her life in the industry was tricked into signing a contract to make a movie she didn’t want to make, after reading the script and watermarked contract. But let’s be real, Johnson obviously isn’t a Marvel diehard. In a recent interview with MTV, Johnson, humorously, couldn’t name a single Tom Holland Spider-Man movie and admitted she’d only seen “4 percent of all the Marvel movies.” She obviously didn’t sign on to Madame Web because she couldn’t wait to mix it up with Doctor Strange and the Hulk, while helping Peter settle into his new digs.
But of course, the narrative had spun too far out of control for any logic now. It had been decided by a not insignificant amount of online voices, Dakota Johnson was being forced to promote a movie she hated, one that would inevitably ruin her perfect filmography. Her changing agencies, from WME to CAA a week after the Madame Web trailer dropped in November, was now being said to have “raised eyebrows,” drawing speculation she was so embarrassed by the movie she had to change agencies. The answer couldn’t have been as simple as the fact actors do indeed change agencies from time to time, or that CAA was also willing to represent her production company, TeaTime Pictures, along with her indie film, Daddio, which, cue the shock and awe, will be released by Sony Pictures Classics, obviously signaling bad blood between the actress and studio.
In any case, everything Johnson said and did in the lead-up to this week’s release was compiled as evidence of reasons why Madame Web was bad. A joke Johnson delivered while hosting SNL about Madame Web being “like if AI had made your boyfriend’s favorite movie,” referring to the cast of popular actresses, was seen as a criticism of the movie, instead of just a standard SNL joke she likely didn’t even write. Her interactions with interviewers were criticized for lacking enthusiasm, which if you go back and watch any of the press interviews, she’s done for her films, she’s rarely been an example of boundless energy and giddiness, and her public vibe, at least in terms of press interviews, is often notably deadpan and brutally honest (as the popular clip of her guest appearance on Ellen showcased).
Cillian Murphy, another actor who is consistently, though more good-naturedly, subject to the idea he’d rather be anywhere else, recently told GQ that press tours are a broken model, and “everyone is bored.” And it’s understandable. No actor or interviewer wants to be there at the end of a press day, and having been an interviewer on that side, yes actors, even those who enjoyed being in the project, are bored and tired. So why do we think Johnson being asked about the meme culture behind “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died (a line that isn’t even in the movie and always seemed like standard trailer exposition) would garner anything but puzzled disinterest and daggers from the actress? Not only is it a waste of time, but it’s an attempt to bait the actor into mocking her own movie, all based upon the faulty theory that she hates it.
From cherry-picking a standard, unsmiling pose on the red carpet at the premiere and claiming she’s being held hostage, to taking her admission to The Wrap about the script, “there were drastic changes. And I can’t even tell you what they were” as yet more evidence she hated the movie, it has become an odd case of projection that feels performative and tied with our premature desire to categorize everything as the worst or best thing ever. It’s no surprise that this also reflects where we are politically as well, as the way we engage with media is reflective of how we engage with society. Misinformation, conspiracies, misquotes and binary extremes are all the rage because that’s where the money is, in both political coverage and entertainment journalism.
There’s this pervading feeling that has crept into so much film coverage, Reddit boards, and Film Twitter that “if we can sustain the idea that the creator or actor hates the film, then we can force it into a reality, and thus absolve ourselves of the responsibility of earnestly saying anything meaningful, good, bad, or in-between, in a culture that already loves extremes, especially if they’re negative.” This feels particularly significant as we saw both ends of that spectrum this week with reactions to Madame Web and Dune Part: Part 2 dropping days apart from each other. We certainly do love to use “unmitigated disaster,” “worst movie ever made,” along with “epic masterpiece,” and “unparalleled achievement” as often as we can, which is usually two or three times a year, just to make sure it sticks. I for one can’t wait for the next “worst movie ever made” and “unparalleled achievement” a couple of months from now.
If Johnson is stuck in the worst movie ever made (which of course, she isn’t), she’s not alone. We’ve witnessed social media platforms and critics form odd parasocial and even predatory behavior with talent for years. Memes of Ben Affleck have circulated for years. Whether it be during an interview with Henry Cavill for BvS that would later have the “Sound of Silence” playing over it or #SadAffleck posts of the actor looking frustrated with dealing with increasingly precarious coffee orders, the man could not catch a break. And sure, part of that comes with the territory of being a celebrity, and the coffee routine could even occasionally be funny. But with it also came the projection of “Affleck hates BvS,” and quotes turned into misconstrued headlines like “Ben Affleck: I won’t do any more interviews with Henry Cavill,” while neither of which were true but were fueled by those who disliked the film and the direction the DCEU had taken.
And of course, there’s the infamous non-spitting incident between Chris Pine and Harry Styles at the 2022 Venice Film Fest during the promotion of Don’t Worry Darling. The film had already become a punching bag because of rumors of tensions between director Olivia Wilde and star, Florence Pugh, along with rumors of Olivia Wilde engaging in a romance with Harry Styles and frequently abandoning her directorial duties. And Internet sleuths had once again set to work going through cast and crew Instagrams, in search of evidence that could shame either party. So, when Chris Pine appeared to astral project to another plane of consciousness while Harry Styles was talking about the movie being “a real movie” the internet was quick to create a narrative that the two actors were feuding and the all reasons behind it. The real reason? Pine was just tired and jetlagged. But coupled with footage that looked like Pine spit at Styles (he didn’t), which was broken down like the Zapruder Film, the narrative remained.
For nearly a decade, we watched critics, audiences, and filmmakers promote the idea that Bruce Willis was lazy, didn’t care about acting, and was just in it for the money as a released VOD action film after VOD action film. He appeared on countless worst performance of the year lists and was labeled difficult and entirely uninterested in the craft of acting. It went on and on until it was revealed he was suffering from aphasia, and everyone was quick to say they had no idea, and how bad they felt for mocking him all those years and spreading false narratives. None of this is to say he didn’t make bad movies, or that any of these actors mentioned haven’t been in bad movies. But if the movies are bad or good, we have to own up to the fact that it’s because we thought they were, and it shouldn’t have anything to do with our expectation of actors to put on a show for us or be someone else lest we make a fiction of their lives. And certainly, if enthusiasm and feigned interest in dumb questions were evidence of a movie’s quality, we would’ve missed out on a lot of great Harrison Ford films over the years.
So, did Dakota Johnson actually enjoy making and being in Madame Web, or did she hate it? There’s no evidence of the latter, but even if she did, who cares? Actors have enjoyed being in bad movies, and have been miserable being in good movies. The quality is always subjective to the individual, both in terms of the talent involved and the viewer. But this desire to do a case study on everything an actor says or does while promoting the film, and then falsify that information whilst proclaiming it as fact among the masses, feels like an attempt to armor a subjective feeling with an objective truth, which isn’t how art, good, bad, corporate, independent, should be engaged with. If you didn’t like Madame Web, it certainly shouldn’t be because Dakota Johnson changed agencies or wasn’t smiling enough while answering questions during a 10-minute window.
As for the chronically online, I doubt any of this will change much if anything. Engagement has become all too powerful, and constructing false narratives is all too easy. But for entertainment journalists and critics responsible for engaging with some of these narratives, I’d like to think pursuing truth in our work still matters, be it in our long-form writing or our tweets. And I think if any of it matters then all of it has to matter, even the films you might consider meaningless or beneath you.
Is Madame Web a silly film to pursue this topic with? Perhaps, but that’s the point. The way we write about what might be labeled as inconsequential is consequential to the larger efforts of becoming better in how we can discuss films, and how we can encourage those outside our profession to do the same. Personally, the consensus on Madame Web matters about as much to me as the consensus on The Holdovers, which is to say not at all. We like what we like, and don’t what we don’t. But regardless of whether it’s a film we dislike or one we love, we not only have the power but responsibility to cut through the web of lies and engage with the film as the film, and not as a proxy for clickbait, a few thousand likes, or a runaway narrative that exists outside the boundaries of the screen.
