Dakota Johnson Just Can’t Be Bothered to Pretend Madame Web Is Good
The Madame Web press tour has brought out some incredible takes from star Dakota Johnson, but her honesty may not bode well for the film itself
Don’t get me wrong. I was one of the few people who was genuinely looking forward to seeing Madame Web after the first trailer dropped in November. It’s still so rare to get superhero movies that have a majority female cast, that I was ready to fight for this movie against all odds. After watching Dakota Johnson’s incredible takes during the Madame Web press tour, however, it seems like this may be a movie that not even the cast is very interested in fighting for.
Johnson’s carefree attitude on the Madame Web press tour isn’t a surprise given her iconic performance on the Ellen DeGeneres show, where the host jokingly asked why she wasn’t invited to Johnson’s birthday party, a big mistake on Ellen’s part. “Actually, no – that’s not the truth, Ellen” has become a meme in its own right, and proved that Johnson will speak her mind regardless of how it might make her look (as she should). If Harrison Ford gets to say whatever he wants during interviews, then so should Johnson.
But that’s not the point. The point is that while Johnson absolutely has the right to speak her truth about what filming Madame Web was like, her comments regarding the film have hilariously overshadowed any goodwill this movie may have had at the start of its marketing push.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Johnson said that filming in front of a blue screen was an “absolutely psychotic” experience. While she trusted the film’s director SJ Clarkson entirely, Johnson said she spent a lot of time thinking, “‘I don’t know if this is going to be good at all! I hope that I did an OK job!’”
And things have only gone more off the rails (in the best possible way) from there. In the week leading up to the film’s release, we’ve gotten more Johnson takes than we know what to do with. When asked who she’d like to see her character Cassandra Webb team up with, she talked about the power sets that would compliment Cassie’s before saying, “I don’t know who those heroes are, but I’ll take them.”
She also tore down a Huffington Post question about the infamous line from the trailer that went viral on social media — “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died” — simply replying that she didn’t understand why people were so obsessed with it. “Why did that go viral? Isn’t any sentence out of context, out context? What a silly thing,” she said flatly. “That seems like a basic storyline to me. Maybe I’m just underneath it.”
While talking to Seth Meyers about what viewers need to know before seeing Madame Web and whether or not it connects to Sony’s Spider-Verse, she said, “You don’t gotta know nothing [to watch this movie], it’s great for America.” And honestly, a “no thoughts, just vibes” movie doesn’t sound that bad right now.
In this same interview with Meyers, Johnson also talked about working with her Gen Z co-stars Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor, saying, “I love them. And they annoy me,” which is hilarious considering that Gen Z is absolutely one of the major target audiences for this movie (why else would they use Billie Eilish’s “Bury a Friend” in the trailer?). As someone on the Gen Z/Millennial cusp though, I, at least, appreciate Johnson’s honesty (I find us annoying sometimes, too).
On a more serious note, Johnson has also taken the opportunity during this press tour to call out streaming services and the industry at large for not trusting creatives to take risks, saying, “The people who run streaming platforms don’t trust creative people or artists to know what’s going to work, and that is just going to make us implode.” Continuing on, she says, “It’s really heartbreaking. It’s just fucking so hard. It’s so hard to get anything made. All of the stuff I’m interested in making is really different, and it’s unique and it’s very forward in whatever it is.”
Based on everything else Johnson has said in interviews thus far, it doesn’t seem like Madame Web entirely fits into the “different,” “unique,” and “forward” categories she’s actually passionate about, which doesn’t necessarily bode well for the film. Madame Web does appear to be taking some risks, but as Morbius has proved, that’s not always a good thing in the Sony Spider-Verse. Will I still watch this movie? Absolutely. But more so in a “this is a trainwreck and I can’t look away” kind of way, rather than with the genuine excitement I may have had before.
Madame Web opens in theaters on Feb. 14.
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Brynna Arens (she/her) is a freelance writer who studies movies, TV, and pop culture through an intersectional feminist lens. She'll watch almost anything tbh, but it's…