Madame Web Review: 1 Up & 9 Downs

5. The Spider-Man References Feel Desperate

Sony's Spider-Man Universe continues to be an absolute misfire of a franchise, hopelessly tethering itself to the Marvel Cinematic Universe even while Kevin Feige and company seem determined to keep it as distant as legally possible.

The Venom films and Morbius both established that the SSMU is effectively a parallel universe to the MCU, and so Madame Web runs with this by introducing a major subplot relating to the origins of Spider-Man in 2003.

Without getting into too much detail, the film features several notable characters from Spider-Man lore, yet these links most often feel like desperate, uninspired attempts to inflate the movie's importance, by tethering it to something mainstream audiences actually recognise.

Yet the nods to Spider-Man's future are likely to be more confusing than exciting, especially to general audiences who might be unfamiliar with the precise place the SSMU holds within the context of the MCU.

And ultimately this is such a vacuous, rancid piece of filmmaking that few will likely want to commit the mental energy to untangling its messy web of references and associations anyway.