I didn’t have many expectations when it came to Madame Web, and it was not really a surprise when the movie didn’t meet any of them. The sorta-kinda-maybe?? Sony Spider-Verse tie-in got absolutely horrible reviews and earned a modest $100 million at the global box office. Now that it’s on Blu-ray, 4K SteelBook, and non-premium digital VOD, people might want to see it, if only out of morbid curiosity.
If I’m being honest, it was little more than morbid curiosity that brought me into Madame Web in the first place. Back when it was coming to theaters, I had a delusional moment about what the film could achieve. Seeing the three young heroines masked up and kicking ass under the tutelage of an older woman, I thought perhaps there was something good in this superfluous Spider-adjacent movie. I was raised on magical girl shows, so any prospect of superheroines teaming up excites me!
But Madame Web director S.J. Clarkson does absolutely nothing with her four cool female characters, in spite of the mysterious circumstances that connect them. Sure, she gives us a lot about a tribe of strange Spider-People in the Amazon, but we never actually find out why the protagonists are all tangled up in that web of fate. (Ha.)
One of the more frustrating parts of Madame Web was the tease for Aña Corazón, Mattie Franklin, and Julia Carpenter as superheroes in full spider-powered glory. And yet over the course of this movie, they never get any sort of superpowers. Even though we get a whiff of their personalities and backstories, that’s all shunted aside by the baffling story choices, like protagonist Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) taking these three endangered superheroes-to-be under her wing, then promptly dumping them on her dear friend Ben Parker for a week while she goes to the Amazon. (You know, where her mother was researching spiders right before she died.)
I left the theater mulling over what could have been. There’s a notable dearth of female leads in modern superhero movies, and even less focus on interactions between the female members of superhero teams. The MCU keeps killing off its leading women. The Marvels tried to compensate, but its take on a female team-up was too little, too late, even if it is kind of a fun time. My interest in superhero movies has been tapering off for some time now, as we’ve been seeing the same sorts of heroes and stories over and over again. Madame Web had the potential to finally fill that void. I foolishly let myself hope; those hopes were crumpled up and tossed into a trash bin.
But then I remembered that there is a movie out there that delivers on the promise of a superheroine team-up. 2020’s Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) wasn’t quite a box-office hit when it came out — it grossed $205 million worldwide, just shy of what it needed to break even. That’s a shame, because it set a bar for female-team blockbuster action that no other movie has met yet.
Granted, that bar is still low. But by God, Birds of Prey leaps over it while swinging a giant, glittery sledgehammer. It took watching Madame Web to really make me appreciate it, though.
Directed by Cathy Yan, Birds of Prey is a loose sequel to David Ayer’s 2016 movie Suicide Squad, in that it also stars Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. (James Gunn’s 2021 feature The Suicide Squad continued her run on the character.) But since the movies’ continuity with each other is unclear, all you really need to know is that BoP’s version of Harley is freshly broken up with the Joker and trying to find herself. Harley narrates the movie in voice-over, gleefully jumping from plot point to plot point, even narrating other characters’ scenes.
Eventually, Harley gets embroiled in a larger web of crime. She crosses paths with determined detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), jaded lounge singer turned getaway driver Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), vengeful archer Helena Bertinelli (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and precocious pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco). All of the women have fleshed-out characters and motivations. On their own, they’re each compelling, but when they come together, their personalities bounce off each other with wonderful synergy.
In Madame Web, meanwhile, the characters’ personalities are only barely hinted at, their interactions just teased. The movie is a slog, but what makes it so frustrating is that there are some glimpses of a halfway decent movie in there. When Cassie leaves her three reluctant rescuees on their own in the woods of New Jersey, the teenagers have an all-too-brief exchange that highlights their personalities and hints at the on-screen relationships they could have with one another. But the movie quickly abandons that idea in favor of the next off-the-rails plot point.
Birds of Prey does it right, though. We learn about all five of the main characters and get a thorough understanding of who they are and what drives them. That’s already a step up from most superhero movies, where female characters feel like obligations to round out a team and don’t form meaningful relationships beyond a chance to pose for a poster together. But the women of Birds of Prey don’t exist in such a vacuum. In just one movie, they share a wide array of interactions, which develops different iterations of their relationships in a way we just don’t see in big action flicks.
Helena is skilled with a bow and arrow, but she’s incredibly awkward and struggles to make conversation when she finally meets the larger group. Cassandra immediately warms to Harley and thinks her ramshackle apartment is the coolest thing in the world. In the middle of the climactic battle, Harley tosses Dinah a hair tie — because you can’t kick ass when your hair’s in your face. All these little interactions fulfill my deep desire to see meaningful female relationships in a big superhero genre flick. The first time I watched the movie, I kept thinking Yes, yes, yes throughout.
The brilliance of Birds of Prey is that each character is seemingly operating within her own genre. Renee is in a detective procedural. Dinah is from a crime thriller. Helena is in a bloody revenge movie, Harley in a feel-good post-breakup romp, and Cassandra in her own little scrappy YA world. When they come together, the blurry lines between all those stories disappear, and they collide in sparkles and neon. And it’s all heightened by their small interactions, which turn the movie from a fun time into a memorable one.
There are loads of little details that make Birds of Prey fun. All of Harley’s costumes are absolutely iconic, sparkly golden overalls and a fringe coat made of caution tape among them. (They’re more fitting for a chaotic clown character than her 2016 Suicide Squad outfit of booty shorts and a crop top that says “Daddy’s Little Monster.”) The villains, particularly Ewan McGregor’s Roman Sionis (aka Black Mask), are kooky and dynamic, but they don’t outshine the heroines on screen. The lead actresses deliver on their performances.
But at the end of the day, the reason Birds of Prey is such a great superheroine movie is because it does a few simple things very well. It includes not one, not two, but five cool female characters with distinct personalities. They’re all capable and skilled in their own ways, and they’re the ones who save the day. And most importantly, by the end of the movie, they’re all friends.
Madame Web had all these separate pieces, and in spite of my low expectations going in, I couldn’t help but see its potential. But Aña, Mattie, and Julia don’t even get powers, let alone a chance to master them. And every possible chance for them to build camaraderie or connect with Cassie is shafted as the movie instead keeps focusing on Cassie’s baffling origin story. Throughout the whole movie, I kept thinking about how good it would be if everything about it changed. Which just made me realize that all I wanted to do was watch a movie that got it right instead.
Birds of Prey is a superheroine team-up movie that actually did get it all right. It’s frustrating that it’s one of the few. But at least every time I walk away from yet another lackluster movie that squanders its female characters, Birds of Prey will be waiting for me in all its grimy, glittery glory.
Birds of Prey is available to stream on Max and is available for rental on Google Play, Apple TV, and other digital platforms. Madame Web is available for rental or purchase on the usual digital platforms, if you must. At least the 4K SteelBook cover art is kind of striking.
The post Watching Madame Web just made me miss Birds of Prey appeared first on Polygon.
