To call Madame Web’s release a disaster would be a wild understatement. Not since Cats has a movie inspired such a combination of terrible reviews (the Guardian has variously described it as “dumb and schlocky”, an “unholy mess” and a “janky rip-off made by people afraid of legal action”) and consumer apathy.
The miserable box office performance – by some distance, it has the lowest-grossing opening weekend of any Spidey-adjacent movie made this century – has killed off a potential franchise at birth. It has damaged the careers of anyone who happened to stray near it. It is doomed, always and for ever, to be a Hollywood punchline.
