With it being Valentine’s Day, I did not expect the cinema to be as full as it was with people wanting to see Madame Web. If anything, I thought everyone would be viewing Bob Marley: One Love.  Since I was not in that theater, I can only guess as to the size of that audience.  Remarkably, when I did see the king of reggae biopic, the crowd was smaller than that for Madame Web.  I also figured that Marvel fatigue would keep box office receipts low.  While not every seat was filled, it was certainly a larger turnout than I expected given the specific date and content.  It was a good mix of people, too, with young and old alike on hand for what is a rather confusing bit of superhero shenanigans.  What I mean to say is that there are plot holes, but we will get to those in a moment.  For now, I will attempt to explain the story as best as I can relate it.

You might think that Constance (Kerry Bishé) would be Madame Web given her fascination with spiders.  It is 1973, and this very pregnant scientist is crawling through the Peruvian Amazon jungle in search of a rare arachnid reported to have incredible healing properties.  Along with her is Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), an adventurer in search of the same insect because he believes it has the power to grant a person bitten by it extraordinary powers.  This sounds insane to Constance, but she is confronted with a different kind of insanity when, after locating the bug, Ezekiel shoots her, leaving her to die and absconding with his prize.  She is looked after by a supposedly mythical group of jungle dwellers with the abilities about which Ezekiel had raved.  Sadly, they are unable to save her life, but they do deliver her baby, with their leader, Santiago (José María Yazpik), vowing to look after the girl.  Score one for pro-life!  We then jump ahead to 2003, and I am not sure what happened to Santiago because that girl grew up to be Cassandra “Cassie” Webb (Dakota Johnson).  She is living in New York City and working as a paramedic alongside her partner Ben Parker (Adam Scott).  She is a no-nonsense ambulance driver, dedicated to her job but awkward outside of it.  We see her inability to interact with others when the child of a woman she brings to the hospital thanks her with a drawing she does not want to accept.  She is also not looking forward to attending the baby shower for Ben’s sister-in-law, Mary Parker (Emma Roberts).  Cassie would rather stay at home and make up excuses than socialize.  The next day while on the job, Cassie has a traumatic experience.  In the process of helping a man get out of an overturned vehicle on the precipice of going over the side of a bridge, she gets trapped in the vehicle as it plummets to the river below.  While she is underwater . . . something happens to her.  I could not tell you what it is exactly, but it has something to do with being able to see things happening in the future.  The next thing she knows Ben has pulled her out of the water and she is recovering from the effects of almost drowning and having had her heart stopped.  From this point on, she begins having what seems to be moments of déjà vu that are intense, but written off as nothing more.  As she begins to realize her powers, we also see that Ezekiel is alive and well, and with his own ability to look into the future.  Unfortunately for him, the main thing he sees are visions of his own demise at the hands of three girls that are able to do similarly enhanced feats as himself.  If you are wondering what this looks like, think Spider-Man and you get the idea.  Because he is keen to avoid this fate, he has decided that he is going to murder the three teenagers that haunt his dreams.  To do so, he steals surveillance technology from the National Security Agency (NSA).  Feeding the descriptions of the females into it, he learns that all three are in New York City.  Thus, it is only a matter of time before they are all picked up by the myriad of cameras that he can now access.  As for Cassie, she is feeling depressed after seeing her boss, O’Neil (Mike Epps), die in an accident and believing that she could have prevented it.  She had planned to not go to the funeral, but Ben eventually convinces her to do so.  Her transit to the service puts her on the train with Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor).  As Cassie waits to depart, her growing clairvoyance tells her that these three girls are about to die.  As if on cue, Ezekiel appears and does his best to fulfil this goal, if not for Cassie’s efforts.  They go on the run, attempting to stay out of sight, while Cassie returns to her apartment to look through Constance’s journal for answers as to what is happening.  This is when Cassie notices Ezekiel in a picture with her mother, the same man who is after her and the girls.  While Cassie is away, the girls decide to get food at a diner, which leads Ezekiel to them.  They are saved once more by Cassie, and once more she must leave them behind.  This time it is to make a quick trip to Peru (as you do), and she puts Ben in charge of the teenagers.  Once in South America, she reunites with Santiago, who tells her that there is more to her abilities than she realizes.  She puts this newfound confidence to work when, upon returning, she has to once more deal with people who will not stay indoors.  To be fair, Mary’s water had broken.  Anyway, in the ensuing fight Ezekiel is defeated, and Cassie has a repeat of earlier, plunging into the river.  This time it is her three charges who pull her out, employing the lifesaving chest compressions to resuscitate her that she had taught them.  Though she is now blind and crippled, she has gained a new family, and they all become versions of Spider-Man.  Hooray.

If you are a Marvel fan watching Madame Web, and I like to think I am in that camp, then you probably came to the conclusion that Ben Parker is the famous Uncle Ben to Peter Parker.  Uncle Ben’s death, except in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) apparently, is what triggers Peter to use his powers to be the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man we all know and love.  If you have not seen this movie and/or are just reading this review, you might think I am making a logic leap.  After all, in the movie they usually refer to Adam Scott’s character as just “Ben.”  You have to read in other places for confirmation that he is, in fact, Ben Parker.  That would make his sister-in-law, Mary Parker, Peter’s mother.  I am getting somewhat into the weeds here with this explanation, but I am doing so to set up the fact that there are a lot of plot holes in this movie.  What I have discussed thus far are more meta-Marvel narratives, and the company often goes back and reconstitutes things to make square story points fit into round plot holes.  This sometimes works, other times it falls flat.  Within the film itself, I found moments there are moments when I frankly did not understand what was happening.  It virtually all but highlights one of these moments when Cassie has taken the girls to the middle of the woods for their protection, and reveals to them that she can see the future.  One of them picks up a rock and throws it at Cassie.  When it is mentioned that Cassie did not see that coming, she protests by saying that this is not how her powers work.  Yet, how do they work?  How does the ability to see events before they unfold mean she can be in several places at once, as she does during the climactic fight with Ezekiel?  Where is Mary’s husband?  This last one, I am willing to bet, will be retconned into some future production.  In the meantime, you will be left scratching your head as to how this all fits together.

There is, though, one shining moment in Madame Web that touched this Catholic reviewer.  During the improbable journey to Peru in the middle of a crisis, Cassie learns more about her background from Santiago.  Why he is not dressed in the garb of his people when they meet is a mystery, but that is a topic for the last paragraph.  The main topic of their interaction is Cassie learning to use her powers.  For . . . reasons(?), she was not gifted with the same spider abilities as Ezekiel, but whatever.  Again, see the previous paragraph for plot holes.  In order to unlock her potential, Santiago says some insightful things that align with Faith.  First, he tells her that in order to better see the future, you have to heal the wounds of the past.  This concept is, in a sense, central to the founding of the Church.  Jesus died for our sins.  Without that act, there would be no Christianity as it is bound up in the prophecies of what the Messiah would do for the world.  He bore our inequity on the Cross so that we might receive healing through His sacrifice.  Without that, we could not move forward as an Easter people, which is something to keep in mind as we progress through Lent.  To further this point, Santiago gives a slightly different take on the classic Spider-Man motto regarding power and responsibility when he advises Cassie that when you take on the responsibility, great power will come.  This is what Jesus did for us, and the Church and its history owes its existence to the resulting power that flowed from Good Friday.  Not that I would necessarily compare Cassie to Jesus, but she carries Santiago’s wise words forward by first reconciling with her mother, who Cassie thought had abandoned her daughter.  That was the required healing she needed to then be able to see how her sacrificing herself for the girls would be meaningful.  Granted, she did not ultimately die, and it did result in Ezekiel’s accidental murder, but the willingness is there, and that is the important part.  God does not call upon us to always make the ultimate sacrifice.  Yet, Lent is about dying to ourselves in little ways so that by Easter we can once more move forward and be His own.

While this is not specific to Madame Web, I feel the need to close on a rather somber note.  The movie is a silly, though inoffensive mess, with a few curse words sprinkled in.  What I find troubling about going to the theater these days are the previews for the frankly demonic films slated to soon be released.  The worst is The First Omen, which seems to suggest that the Church is responsible for creating the devil.  This is totally offensive.  Therefore, I am thinking from now on of arriving to the theater a little later so as to miss this one, and I hope you do not see it when it comes out.  Watch, if nothing else, Madame Web instead.