My World Of Flops: Madame Web and the glorious subversiveness of Dakota Johnson
Madame Web is at war with itself—and so is Dakota Johnson
My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were financial flops, critical failures, or lack a substantial cult following.
As a third-generation movie star whose grandmother (Tippi Hedren) starred in The Birds and whose mother (Melanie Griffith) and father (Don Johnson) are both famous actors, Dakota Johnson was born beautiful. She was born rich. She was born into a world of fame and wealth. Johnson was also born with zero fucks to give.
Johnson’s ascent to contemporary-folk-hero-speaking-truth-to-power status kicked into high gear during a legendary visit to Ellen where the now-disgraced talk show host complained about not being invited to Johnson’s thirtieth birthday party. The iconoclastic actress broke the Hollywood code of polite silence by insisting that because Ellen gave her so much shit about not being invited to her last birthday, she made sure to ask her this time around.
“Actually, no, that’s not the truth, Ellen. You were,” are Johnson’s exact words. Things grew less awkward from there, but only because it would have been impossible for them to be more uncomfortable. It was a brief exchange on a television show that nevertheless did immeasurable damage to Ellen’s brand as niceness personified while establishing Johnson as a rebellious truthteller willing to call the Hollywood establishment out on its lies and its bullshit.
DeGeneres foolishly doubled down on her insistence that she was not invited to the party. Johnson held her ground and insisted that she invited Ellen, but Ellen did not come. Then, puzzlingly, DeGeneres confronted her publicly on her talk show rather than discuss any other topic.
It’s ironic that Johnson rose to overnight fame playing Anastasia Steele, the heroine of the Fifty Shades Of Grey series and pop culture’s preeminent sexual submissive, because there’s nothing submissive about Johnson’s offscreen persona. The key to Johnson’s star-making performance in Fifty Shades Of Grey is that she played the character’s submissiveness as a manifestation of strength rather than weakness. She gives herself to a wealthy, powerful, dominant partner. That agency defines her as much, if not more, than her submissiveness. If you can survive playing an iconically awful character like Anastasia Steele, you can survive all the bullshit that Hollywood has to offer. That includes playing the lead role in 2024’s Madame Web.
Johnson’s entry into comic book fare was a final nail in the coffin of the superhero boom, which launched in 2008 when Jon Favreau’s Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe that would change film and pop culture. The once-mighty superhero cinematic movement was wheezing, however, when the geniuses at Sony decided to make, in Madame Web, a Spider-Man movie without Spider-Man. That’s what happened with Venom, too, but Venom succeeded in being a Spider-Man movie minus the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler because it was about a cult anti-hero beloved by juvenile delinquents and malcontents.
Madame Web, in sharp contrast, is about an obscure character beloved by no one. Also, in the comic books, Madame Web is a disabled old woman who is in complete control of her powers. Yet, in a movie world newly obsessed with the representation of marginalized minorities, Madame Web makes the puzzling choice to have its heroine be an impossibly attractive, non-disabled young person like pretty much every superhero ever.
Johnson seems like someone who would roll her eyes derisively at the idea of seeing a movie with dialogue like “The spider-venom did have healing properties!” So, the idea of Johnson devoting months of her life to acting in a movie where she delivers lines like that represents a grand cosmic joke. Thankfully, Johnson is in on the joke, and her prickly intelligence and iron will make it apparent that she knows just how ridiculous the movie is and shares our disappointment and confusion. Johnson’s wonderfully independent-minded publicity tour for Madame Web made it clear that the finished project was not what she had signed on for. Johnson spoke vaguely of a fabled “good script” that was cavalierly tossed aside so that Madame Web could be realized onscreen in a manner at once bland and embarrassing.