'Madame Web' Continues Hollywood's Mistreatment of Female Superhero Movies

Sony's latest failed Spider-Man spin-off flick is a reminder of how Hollywood often (intentionally or not) sets up such girl-powered fantasies to fail

With word that Amazon’s Silk: Spider Society is on pause with the show possibly being refocused to make it more “male-skewing,” and news that the opening weekend audience for Madame Web was just 46%, there is handwringing about whether the Sony release’s poor showing will plunge Hollywood back into old thinking about female-centric superhero films being box office poison.

That is less of a concern now as comic book superhero movies (and Disney fantasies) become less of an overall pop culture focus. Even as The Marvels and Wish dive-bombed this past November, many of the biggest hits of mid-2023 and early 2024 (Barbie, Taylor Swift: The ERAS Tour, Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Anyone But You Mean Girls, etc.) put actresses and/or female filmmakers front-and-center.

However, there is a cruel irony in the idea of Madame Web specifically being tagged as “proof” that female-led superhero movies don’t work. Wonder Woman broke out in 2017 because, among other variables, it offered a marquee character, an A-level budget, and action and spectacle on par with the male-centric superhero tentpoles. Madame Web followed the pre-Wonder Woman formula of giving women the cinematic equivalent of sloppy seconds.