Every now and then my friends get together to watch bad movies. This time, we had chosen Road House and Madame Web and we actually started with Madame Web first; only, after about ten minutes we said to ourselves, "this may actually be too bad, let's go with Road House."
Road House, despite its every attempt to convince you otherwise, is a comedy. While it veils itself under the guise of serious drama, none of the characters are actually in any danger, and despite trying to set the mood with gravitas, it quickly pivots into a John Wick esque film, where the action is peppered with corny dialogue, jokes and absurdity. McGregor brings, what I'm told, his trademark testosterone-fuelled energy to the scene, to the point where one begins to wonder if this movie is an ad for his UFC fights instead. Given its quick descent into absurdism and the copious amounts of time Jake Gyllenhaal started taking off his shirt to show off his gleaming, sweaty muscles, the room was filled with hoots and hollers of "Jacked Gyllenhaal! Jacked Gyllenhaal!"
Madame Web is on another level entirely. I thought I had won the worst movie recommendation of 2024 when I forced my friends to watch Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire. As usual, when it comes to bad movies, Sony puts up a good fight. None of these lines are serious. None of these lines would survive past a first draft; that they even made it into a first draft to begin with begs many questions, such as "is bad movie night a tradition we should expunge? how much more must we suffer?" Everyone had contributed a snack to bad movie night, but at least Road House was sufficiently entertaining that we actually watched the film. With Madame Web, fools we became, scrambling towards the snacks, begging the honey soy chips and thai chilli doritos to save us from the horrors on screen. None of these were flavours I liked. Hell, I don't even like doritos. That I ate them should tell you much.
Very early on, we realized that the villain's face was only shown when he wasn't speaking. If there was dialogue, the camera would jump away in fear. On off-moments when the hectic view lingered over his mouth, the dialogue did not match the lips. Obviously, late rewrites were done, but the sheer extent of change and the actual dialogue being delivered must point to an unspeakable horror behind the scenes. The villain, in his bland recorded studio delivery, repeats lines just to fill in the gaps of camera work. In each scene, the rhythmn struggles. There is no reason for anything to be here.
At one point, my friend shouted, "This is literally a Terminator movie but with Spider-man as the villain!" and I was like, "Yes! Yes, it is! So why didn't they just make Terminator but with Spider-man?" Instead, the movie is too caught up on its own lore; a lore which doesn't make sense, a lore held up as phony sanctimony and yet refuses to elaborate, because not even the writers know what it is. At least with JJ Abrahms, you get drama pertaining to the mcguffins, but here, you're left with nothing but emphasized words. What is the "Web?" Nobody knows, only that it's important, so let's talk about it as if it needs to be Capitalized. At one point, in a scene out of nowhere, the main character (Cassie Webb! Cassie Webb!) teaches other characters about CPR, and it is this long drawn-out scene with no drama or intent, and we all looked at each other and said, "this...this cannot be the pivotal foreshadowing scene for the ending."
We started howling. "It can't," we cried. "It just can't!"
It was.
If you make a film, and you put in love and intention, and you may be wrong or silly or lack knowledge of cinema, but you will have created something with some amount of substance. Rebel Moon may be one of the worst movies I've seen, but I can at least feel that Zack Snyder is in love with himself. In every scene, he is whispering into your ear like an excited little kid: "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if he fell off, then jumped back on the hippogriff in slo-mo!" and you want to tell him, Zack please, there is no drama in this scene, you are stealing from other films, you are weaving climaxes torn from pieces you do not understand, but he'll turn to you, all giddy with joy, and say, "Haha! And then this slo-mo will be extra slo-mo! That's how you build the anticipation! Will he make it back onto the hippogriff? Oh no, he might not, haha! Watch and find out!"
And then you sigh. But it's Zack Snyder. At least...at least this man is doing what he loves.
Madame Web is not this. Madame Web is a soulless construction. It is a movie found in post, woven together by faceless executives whose desire is to be part of a work of art, to steal its glamour and honour and recognition. A great deal of suffering was enacted upon its construction; a frankenstein fused together from a pile of filmed dregs. It is a movie dictated by fear and desperation, by higher-ups checking what outdated trends they can use to sell just one more ticket at the box office, flattening out just one more piece of dialogue so that anyone--literally anyone--can watch it without feeling lost. It does not even come close to Rebel Moon. How can it, when it does not love anything?
To give you an idea, after we finished Madame Web, I announced to the room my departure. One of my friends instinctively blurted out, "Sorry! [For making you watch Madame Web]" and the entire house erupted into peals of laughter.
And that's how you know we had a good time.
