2024, SJ Clarkson (Doctors) -- cinema
Celeste O'Connor, in a promo shown right before the movie, "...takes place in the Spider-Verse."
It just didn't bode well.
What metaphor should we go for at this moment? Dumpster Fire? Train Wreck? Shit-Show? Just a browse of the Top Critics in Rotten Tomatoes will give you a bucket full of pithy takedowns. But mine is rather mundane -- bored. Boring. Literally nodded off for a few seconds during the Chest Compressions Game scene. Came to, seeing them do odd things to pillows. Not sure why. Still not sure why.
Not THAT pervs; they're highschool kids !!
So, yeah, we went and saw it. Why? My excuse is two-fold. To see if it could truly be bad as I expected. And, because... actually no, just that reason enough. Kinda sort ironically but really... it cannot be that bad, can it?
Yep. It can.
Of note, I Googled the movie a bit and they may actually bank on the desire to hate-watch it, or people going to see it hoping it will be the next Showgirls for them.
OK, on with the "plot".
Morbius went to Costa Rica to find bats that could cure what ails him. Mama Webb went to The Amazon to find spiders that could cure <spoiler> what was ailing her unborn child <end_spoiler>. She finds said spider, as well as a tribe of Amazonian spider-people who, since it was the 1970s definitely could (by the rules of a multi-verse) actually have seen a Spider-Man comic from our universe, which could explain their outfits. But Mama Webb is betrayed & shot, and only via spider-bite is her unborn baby saved from certain death. And the spider-people ship her back to the US to become an orphan in The System.
Years later, Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson, 50 Shades of Grey) is an EMT who loooooooves chest compressions (I mean, looooove) and is an asshole. She's mean to coworkers, mean to patients, barely tolerates her bus-mate Ben Parker (yes, that Ben Parker; Adam Scott, Severance) but she loves chest compressions. After a near death experience where she is saved by ... c'mon guess... you can do it... GUESS ! Yes... chest compressions !! So yeah, after this near-death experience, wherein she touched "the web" (of fate), she awakens with the power of limited clairvoyance. Like in all origin stories, she doesn't quite understand her emerging powers and screws up, letting someone die.
So, that was her boss, the guy who sucks at making hamburgers, but why was he driving away? In the scene just before he was yelling at firefighters to be let back into the burning building so they could save people. They say no, so he just hops in an ambulance (that was probably still required on scene) and drives away. And gets smooshed. Why?
"Why" is the theme of this movie writeup...
Anywayz, Cassie the Asshat is at home sulking when Ben asks here to go to the funeral, knowing that she is just the kind of asshat to skip out on her friend & boss's funeral. She relents and while on the train she starts having her limited clairvoyant visions. She sees people get on the train, make comments, disappear, get on again, and then sees Evil Spider Guy. And he's after The Girls. The Girls? The above mentioned highschoolers, three young ladies that Cassie has bumped into prior, as they are all tied together in some web (of fate).
So, yeah, Evil Spider Guy is the man who betrayed Cassie's mom, killed her, and took her spider. Why? Who knows; we saw he took some spy pics of it but.... Some 30 years later he has spider-powers and ... well, other than that, we don't know anything. He's rich? He has his own limited clairvoyant visions but always focused on seeing three Spider-Girls killing him. But who is he? Why is he? What does he do with his spider-powers beside have bad dreams and kill people with touch poison? And why did they ADR the fuck out of the poor guy?!?! And finally, why and HOW is he wearing a Spider-Man outfit 20 years before there was a Spider-Man?
Cassie rescues the kids and hides them... in the woods; pulls off the side of a road and tells them to "sit here, don't go anywhere, don't do anything, I have stuff to do..." The kids don't listen. And unfortunately the fastest ever newspaper print run has happened and by early that afternoon, everyone knows who she is, and what she did. Well, she didn't actually do it, but... everyone thinks she did?
Is Evil Spider-Guy also the inventor of the fastest printing press ever? Is it ... perhaps, the Daily Bugle? Does he have a misinformation team? Did he seed descension in a younger J Jonah Jameson before Spider-Man was even born?
Oh, the girls/kids/highschoolers: Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney, Euphoria), the demure, nervous girl, Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), the skate-boarding curmudgeon who loves Britney Spears, and Anya Corazon (Isabel Merced, Let It Snow), the science girl.
Evil Spider-Guy has also hired a "person in the chair" (Ned's role in the real Spider-Man movies) who is doing stuff with NSA tech and CCT and facial recognition. I guess the writers saw Person of Interest ? Anywayz, the kids are located at a roadside diner dancing on table tops cuz girlz just wanna have fun. Nobody in the diner yells at these stupid kids to get their dirty boots down off the table. Cassie rams a taxi cab thru the wall just as Evil Spider-Guy shows up. Remember, Cassie's an asshat who doesn't care that she stole someone's taxi, doesn't care about collateral damage, she just knows that she has to save these kids.
Oh, and she also knows now that its all related to her mom and Evil Spider-Guy and spider-people in Peru. So, she (again) dumps the kids, this time with Ben, and flies off to Peru. Older, wiser, spider-people-guy who helped deliver her is waiting. And provides all the exposition to ... well, not really explain anything other than the web (of fate). She could have asked for so much, but whatever... BACK THE GOOD OLD US of A.
What? Why? So many why's ! I get that there is a trope of flying somewhere distant to "get answers" but how does she conceive she can fly to Peru and just walk into The Amazon based on some small map that looks like a table mat from an Amazonian Adventure themed restaurant, and actually FIND something. I mean, if it wasn't for Older Wiser Spider-People-Guy, she wouldn't have received any exposition drop and immersed herself in the Pool of Visions.
Anywayz. I think, by now, she has determined the Evil Spider-Guy will find her and the kids no matter where they go so she sets a trap. They could have done some clever metaphor having her drawn him into her web, but that need to involve cleverness. Instead, she just draws him towards a fireworks warehouse which she will blow up, with him inside, because she doesn't care about other people's property, or collateral damage.
Oh, and Ben Parker's sister is having a baby whose name we are not allowed to hear said out loud. Oh, and Ben has a new girlfriend, whose name we are not allowed to hear said out loud, but she is probably The One.
Cassie does blow up aforementioned warehouse, has to accept the responsibility of the kids, and thus gets power (dumb-ass play on the catch phrase) and uses her magical web (of fate) powers to defeat Evil Spider-Guy, but not before some NYPD helicopter guys are killed. Oh, and and Cassie falls into water and is injured again. I think I nodded off again, mid-action scene. Not sure how she was injured.
Ages later she has a fancy ass wheelchair and TERRIBLE looking glasses and she and the kids are now all friends. No plot cleanup, no explanations, no nuttin. Given this is an origin story for .... something, are we seriously supposed to expect more movies? And given the divergence from any general audience expectations with the (totally not) Spider-Verse (these are NOT three spider-ladies from other dimensions, they are all just three young ladies who eventually get different powers and eventually don spider-related costumes) what was the purpose of this movie?
Just a terribly boring, confusing, astoundingly badly acted movie that might have been at least palatable three versions ago before the Purple Suits constantly meddled with it. And yet, somehow, its out there, on the Big Screen, while other properties have been shelved. And there is not any likelihood of there being a sequel. Is there?
ASTOUNDINGLY badly acted. I mean, I have seen many of these actors in other roles and they were at least passable actors, but here, all the dialogue is barely above z-grade. How many script changes, and re-shoots does it take for an actor to just stop giving a shit? Someone should have noticed this was happening, no? Its like when you watch a TikTok and you ask yourself, "Can someone be this stupid?" and you know the answer is, "No, they are just rage-baiting you..." Were some Purple Suits just rage-baiting the MCU fans?
So many questions. But generally, why did I see this movie?
In a film with a lot of really bad scenes, the absolute worst was Spider-guy waking up from his nightmare and having the most inane expository conversation with the NSA woman he *just* picked up at an event as if they were married for years, and even then it would be a very bat-shit bizarre thing to be discussing in the middle of the night. Dude the woman actually seems interested in your dumbass story, maybe stop trying to kill teenagers and attempt to live your life with the only woman you don't have to blackmail into clearly tolerating you. I mean, I was completely done with that character midway through that scene and would've been happy to never see him again.
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