Richard Crouse

“Madame Web,” a new Spider-Man spinoff starring Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney, and now playing in theatres, is a superhero origin story that actually becomes less interesting once the man character’s powers kick in.

The story begins in the Peruvian Amazon where pregnant arachnologist Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé) and explorer Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) are hunting for a rare spider whose venom can cure diseases. Upon discovery, Ezekiel decides he wants the spider all for himself, and shoots Constance, leaving her for dead. Before she passes away, however, she is bitten by the magical spider and gives birth to a daughter.

Cut to thirty years later. It’s 2003, and Ezekiel is now wealthy beyond imagination, with powers derived from the Peruvian spider venom. But with the good comes the bad. He is plagued by visions of his own murder by teenagers Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor) and Anya Corazon (Isabel Merced).

His sidekick Amaria (Zosia Mamet) tracks them down, and Ezekiel wants them dead before they can do him harm.

In another part of New York, Constance’s daughter has grown up to be socially awkward paramedic Cassandra Webb (Johnson). A near death experience, coupled with the injection of spider venom from her mom, has left her with the ability to see into the future. When she has a premonition of Ezekiel murdering the trio of teens on a train, she steps in to help. “If you want to live,” she says, “you have to trust me.”

To fully understand why Ezekiel wants the three women dead, Casandra must learn to control her new powers. To do that, she must look to the past, and her mother’s work in the Amazon.

Like a lot of people who follow this kind of thing, I saw the on-line “Madame Web” news and its star, Dakota Johnson’s endlessly meme-able press tour. I thought the chatter was entertaining, and Dakota’s interviews may one day become the stuff of internet lore. Flippant, disinterested and outspoken, her press interviews probably gave the studio a headache, but likely made her fans happy for their unfiltered honesty.

After having seen the film, it is my solemn duty to let you know that the interviews are more entertaining than anything in the movie she was out there promoting.

I was intrigued that “Madame Web’s” story was not another caped superhero saves the world tale. Origin stories should keep the action personal, allowing us to get to know the character before they set off on grand, planet changing adventures.

But origin stories are tough. The stories have to do the heavy lifting with exposition while keeping the movie moving along. “Madame Web” gets bogged down with tedious repeating of what is to come, comedy moments, some intentional, some not, that don’t land, and weirdly disengaged direction and performances.

It may have worked if the stakes weren’t so low. Ezekiel, the villain, while ill-tempered and creepy, doesn’t seem to pose THAT much of a threat. He does have a cool villain’s lair, what little we see of it anyway, and has power and money, but he isn’t that hard to thwart, and great villains should at last appear to be unthwartable (I know that’s not a word, but it seemed appropriate here).

Even the action scenes seem listless. They harken back to the bad old days of “Catwoman” and “Daredevil.” No huge stakes, unless you are the Pepsi-Cola sign in Queens, New York. That thing takes a beating.

I know the movie is set in 2003, but the action doesn’t feel like a tribute to the shooting style and CGI of the era, it just feels dated.

By the time the end credits roll, you’ll wish you had the power to see into the future, like Cassandra Webb, so you’d know to skip this one.