The ‘Madame Web’ press tour became a tangled web of conspiracy theories and misconstrued quotes to create the narrative Johnson hated her own movie.
Oh, what a tangled web we’ve woven. Sony’s latest entry in 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 bluescreen, in which she said, “I’ve never really done a movie where you are on a bluescreen, 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 OK 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 that Johnson hated being in Madame Web caught fire, and as an increasingly headline-driven culture, readers and other entertainment journalists latched on to 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,” which 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 that 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 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).
