Hello, it was Jason Sepsim and on Merseay Night, and welcome to a tiny, tiny, tiny spider sized episode of X Revision, the podcast when we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
In today's episode, it's a previously on. We're catching up on Madam Webb as part of a series revisiting all the things we missed while we were on hiatus in the Amazon with her mother before she died.
And just in case you didn't catch the amazing, the fantastically, very unique Madam Web in theaters, don't worry. Madam Web is now streaming on Netflix.
Catch it now. Picture this nineteen seventy three. Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, a young woman is hunting for a spider. The spider has magical healing powders, but she is not the only one looking for it. In fact, as she finds it, she's betrayed by the very man to be protecting her, Ezekiel Simms. He has a suspicious mustache. She should have known.
In a very strange way of speaking, which we should.
We will delve into that he shoots her even though she is pregnant, and he leaves her for dead. Taking the magical healing Spider with him into the jungle. As this mysterious woman leeds out, she is saved by an even more mysterious group of magical spider people known as loss Aranyus. And I just want to say at this point we are not making any of this up for hyperbole. This is absolutely what happens in Madam Webb. While Los Aranius cannot save her, they can save her new born daughter,
Cassandra Webb. Well, guess what. They let a magical healing spider bite her mum and it's saves the baby as the baby is being born. Smash cut to New York in two thousand and three and the worst driving you've seen this side of the Fast and Furious movies as we meet Cassie Web who is now an EMT, something which I just have to say is not canon to the comics and for some reason, is so focused on in this movie that you think it might be like
a top there's style EMT promotional advert. You just couldn't believe it.
I mean to the point that there is a wild scene in which Cassie shows.
Her her Spider charges, her future spider charges.
How to do chest compressions and perform a point of the movie in a way that lets you know this will happen later on the new movie.
And not just that, but it's like incredibly important, to the point where one of the charges, Matty Franklin, says, you're a great teacher, and she know she's a horrible person. That's actually one of the things I love the most about this movie. Cassandra Webb is one of Hollywood's most unlikable female characters, and I think that is powerful. So she's this unlikable woman is driving recklessly through New York,
causing many problems. But guess what good news for Spider fans because her partner in the EMT business is Ben Parker. Uncle Ben played by Adam Scott, who I just have to say, I'm so happy for him because he's a nerd like us, and I know that this was probably his dream to play Uncle Ben, So good for you. So the pair save the person who is in the back of their ambulance, but Cassie is weird about it.
She's rude to the person's kid. She sees Sidney Sweeney, and she's kind of rude to Sydney Sweeney, which is a shame because that is Julia Carpenter, but in this movie she's called Julia Cromwell because she's not married yet. I guess. So. Cassie is weird about everything. And after being weird at Mary Parker dunt dun dun dun dun du baby shower for the future Peter though he has never known named, she has a near death experience that
gives her precognitive powers. Of course, yes, of course she does all she's Madam Webb, and this is how she gets those powers. She has a future vision of her mentor Mike Epps again not making this up, and he is gonna die but she can't save him. Then she gets blown into her She goes to save somebody on Yeah, the whole thing is weird. She's saving somebody on a bridge and she falls into the Hudson and then she
comes back and she's dead for three minutes. But don't worry because now she's a pre cog And then what happened next?
Yes, you know, wrong, wrong, Yes, so she is a pre cod guy.
She's a sorry, she has pre cognitive powers. She's not a minority report. She saves three teenage girls from don't dun't done. Ezekiel Simms, who by the way, has been keeping that spider and sleeping with NSA agent so that he can use tracking technology to find three teenage girls that he sees in his dreams murdering him. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
With that.
And now let's talk about the voice.
Let's talk about it. Let's talk about the many strange things about Ezekiel Sims, namely one, he's having visions of three teenage girls for years.
Yeah, every single night, every single night's dreamable night.
And he tells no one about.
It except for the NSA agent that he kills to get the tracking stuff. And in that fantastic moment, which was the first time my cinema burst into laughter, he says, yeah, I'm dying or they're gonna murder me, and everyone went, wait what. And I just want to say, there is a this actor who plays Ezekiel Simms. T hear here Ryan. He is such a fantastic actor. If you haven't seen the French movie Called a Prophet, it is legit one of the best movies ever made. It's so fantastic. He
is an incredible actor. But here they made the choice to adr and re dub almost all of his dialogue. Yes, and it is inexplicable.
Well, I'll explain it this way. I think very clearly. There were plot issues. They couldn't do reshoots because.
The money ran out.
There's you know, a quite strong cap on a lot of the Sony Spider movie stuff. And the fix, which I think is reasonable, was Okay, we adr Ezekiel Simms and we changed the plot and the storyline around that way. But the result is just crazy, I mean, extremely surreal, weird.
It's like watching Cats level of surreal, especially if you watch it more than once. Because I watched it twice in the cinema. The second time I could really see all the times when they were adring him. And yeah, that makes sense because the general story in the the scoop Mill of Hollywood is that this was originally supposed to be tied to Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker movies. Then they changed the timeline to make it fit with the
Tom Holland movies. But then they also kind of messed up the timeline, so they separated it from any of the movies, and now this is just the different universe or something, so that makes sense. But anyways, he he's dreaming of these teenage girls. He wants to kill them.
He has what Shashana from Girls is there as is woman behind the wind the screen, his private hacker, and he's using you know what now is just normal technology, but in two thousand and three was extremely high tech to hunt down these girls Julia Cornwall and your Corrazon
and Matty Franklin. Now, of course, because her web connects them all, Madam Webb has already met all these different teenagers before she sees them on the train, and in one of the movie's kind of best sequences, she sees Ezekiel kill them all and then she has to stop. It's very final destination. I feel like they should have leaned into that more. That could have been a really
cool angle for the movie. So she saves them, but because she is an unlikable female character in the best way, she abandons them in the woods after being accused of kidnapping them so that she can go home and read her mom's diary while uttering the immaculate line of.
Spider people, LUs Arunias, spider people, las Irunias.
Yeah, completely normal, completely normal, And then she has to go back and save the girls that she abandoned.
Well, they're not in the woods anymore.
Where could they have gone? Where could they have gone? Maybe they're going to this diner where they are dancing on a table to Toxic by Britney Spears. When Ezekiel Simms, who has toxic blood and can kill people with it, once again, tries to kill them, Cassie sees him do this, and then you know it's the future luckily, so she can go in and save it. And then she says, let's try that again. And they obviously thought that was
like a really cool moment. So what she does, classic Cassie web fashion, just drives a car into the diner. She'll try and do any cool. Just drives a car into the diner. Good thing is Cassie now knows the truth. She knows about the Spider people. She has to go to Peru, so she abandons the children again, this time giving them to Uncle Ben, who, by the way, is like the best friend ever.
Here's three kids, Okay.
Here's three teenage girls who I've been staying within a motel teaching CPR. You look after them now, and so luckily or unluckily, they're staying with Mary Parker there would be mother of Peter Parker, and the girls are chilling and they're watching you know, I Know what you did last summer, because this is essentially just a teen sleepover movie. Yes, And unfortunately Mary goes into labor don't boom, bomb bomb, while Cassie is in Peru learning that her mother didn't
hate her. She's astually projecting, she's hugging her mom.
Can we talk about why go to Peru?
Like? Why did she?
Why is part of this movie? The future Madam web leaving the action to fly to take a like a I don't know how well how.
Long long journey, but a long journey to Peru yep. And she goes to Peru and she meets with the guy who saved her mum's life, and she he astro projects her into a pool where she sees all the different webs that she can connect. By the way, again, just like, absolutely not canon. This is a Catwoman level, you know cat Woman, the Halle Berry movie. It's a Catwoman level kind of reimagining of her powers and where they come from. And then she's like, Okay, cool, I
guess I can see the future now. And I can actually project. Thanks Peruvian guy, I'm out. I'm going back to New York where Ezekiel is trying to kill her three teenage charges and he's chasing through New York City and he's gonna kill Ben Parker, and he's gonna kill Mary Parker and maybe Peter Parker and that would be really bad. But luckily Cassie remembers when Mike Kep said there was a dangerous warehouse full of fireworks before he was killed by a truck. So she takes the children
to the dangerous fireworks. I'm telling you, unlikable, just terrible role model. So she takes the teenagers, who, by the way, we haven't really talked about this yet, they don't have any powers. They are not in Spider People.
They will have powers, but they have no powers right now.
They will be in a movie that we have yet to see, and we'll never see.
Will we see it? Will we see?
You know? I do think that Sydney Sweeney has the star power that we could see her move into the MCU. I would. I loved the version of Matty Franklin that we got in this. I thought Anya was really fun, So those three would be my big thing that I would want to see come over. But anyway, so they're powerless teens that she takes into a fireworks factory and
then they start setting works off with flares. By the way, also at this point I must mention that they have electric shocked Ezekiel off the top of a ambulance using the paddles. It's all very unsafe, and Ezekiel has a Miles Morales esque spider costume which we will talk about this afterwards, but like essentially makes him the first person in the cannon.
Absolutely hated that they did that, terrible choice.
Ezekiel is most famous, and they do this in the movie quite a lot, and it is quite funny. His costume is just a man wearing a suit with no shoes. He's just got bare feet and and and he is doing that in the movie. So there was no need for this weird spider costume, but I guess someone had to add one, so they said it's him. So they're
in the firebucks factory, Ezekiel comes. He puts all the girls in danger, but don't worry, Madam Webkin astro project, so she astrally projects to three different places, saves the girls, then if you've been wondering throughout this movie while watching it, why is there so much Pepsi promotion in this movie? Why is that the brand that they decided to go for, Well, don't worry, because you know how Ezekiel is defeated by a giant Pepsi sign that falls on him. That is
really what happens. Pepsi was like, we want to put the promotion in this movie so bad, we don't even care if it kills someone. If Pepsi kills someone, that's okay, and then all is well. Peter Parker is born, though never named, it's just a baby. It could be Peter's sister who was secretly born and in like two issues of the comics, but we can assume it's probably supposed to be Peter. Uncle Ben says, oh, I like to
be an uncle. It's all the power, all the responsibility, but like, no, all the fun, And then she goes, that's what he thinks, because she knows he's that those parents are gonna die. She knows everything, and she doesn't want anyone She just lets it happen. And a year in the future, we see Madam Web and her adopted spider children what happened to their parents. No one cares.
They don't care any They're just out free, living free now.
Just living free with Madam Webb, who is now blind after the Pepsi sign incident and in a wheelchair, because that's what happens to Madam web And they tried to make her look marginally older because, as we have talked about before, Madame.
Weber an ancient woman.
And then we get a hilarious moment where Madam Webb envisions the future where they're all spider people, which is what we saw in the trailers. And then the funniest part is at the end where she has a spider walking over her hand and she looks at the audience and says, the best thing about the future is it hasn't happened yet. And that's the end of the movie. That's Madam webb.
Incredible film.
I died every time Ezekiel said anything, I.
Know, I'm like justice for Taha because that is like just ridiculous, Like, yeah, every time he says anything, You're like, why did they do the most gravelly outrageous villain voice actor adr Like it's just shocking.
And it also seems as if one of the notes was like, hey, we're not really understanding what the villain's motivation is, so can you have him mention some version of in the future.
They will destroy me? Yeah, those girls cannot exist.
He says it almost every single They're trying to kill me in the future.
I can't let that happen.
Those girls are in my future, but I am my.
Dreams and every night, like do you know what it's like to die every night? I mean, this movie is like so unbelievably silly, but I did have a very fun time watching it, Like it is one of those Yeah, it's not like Morbius, where I found Morebus to be quite dry and not as silly as it should be. Though Matt Smith is great and Morbius and was having a great time. This is more of a movie wheb whatever Dakota Johnson says, and she has said many incredible
things about this movie. There is no way that people didn't know what this movie was. Like you're sitting there, Yeah, come Mom's diary and you're saying, ah, Spider, people like you see what the movie was. And she knows some really great weird acting, like the characterization of Cassie Webb is so unlikable that it's like fantastic. It's just absolutely baffling.
I agree with you.
I actually think to Cooda Johnson as an actor, like when she is in bitchy gear, when she's like kind of toxic and sniping at people, it's actually really compelling. It's when she has to shift in any into any kind of other kind of mode that it doesn't carry over. But there is something like weirdly interesting about her depiction of Madam Webb as a completely like unlikable person.
I know, And it's especially strange because like, who who is this movie for?
That's like that's the thing for the investors, for the stockholders, the stockholders.
Also, can we just talk about the fact I think about this every time I watch one of these movies, but like, how funny is the The acronym for these movies is Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, which essentially is Spumker Spunker. I don't know, that's why it's just so good. We'll be right back after a quick brick.
And we're back.
Okay, So the next movie in this series is gonna be Craven R rated Aaron Taylor Johnson arguably one of the best actors future future James Bond. It's r rated. He's gonna be a craven who like loves animals, I think, and is gonna be killing, uh, killing hunters, which just seems absolutely Boncerus Russell Crowe is in it. I mean, I can't wait. That's like my most anticipated movie. I'm going but I think it's just gonna be completely ridiculous.
This is if our recap sounded silly, it is nothing compared to actually watching the movie, which but we didn't even get into the fact that when she goes back to Peru, the Los Arnus leader does a reimagining of the with great power comes great responsibility. He says, if you take on the responsibility, the power will come, Like if you build it, they will come.
I rolled my eyes so hard, dude, not to mention that.
Okay, that's funny, and I'm glad that it's funny, because if it was like slightly better, it would have completely undercut that saying and the power of it for Spider Man. Like, but the fact that they tried so many times to do that to kind of like repurpose Spider Man lore and sayings around this character is just absolutely hilarious.
I think I would rather have The rumor was, because you see them eating fortune cookies. The rumor was Uncle Bem was gonna find that line in a fortune cookie. And I think I actually would have preferred that because the way they did it was like so bad. But anyway, anyway, what a picture, What a film, folks, That's cinema.
That is true cinema.
Every episode we close the show with a variety fast moving segments. Today it's Who's Who, in which we talk about some of our favorite weird characters from a given universe. This episode we're doing our favorite spider Man weirdos.
I got one.
I'll tell you the one I love, Golden sponge Cake spider Man. So, Golden sponge Cake spider Man is a play on the hostess ads that you would get with your like apple Pie, and it would have a little comic that would include usually a Marvel character eating the cake and this is part of their advertising. And he existed briefly in the comics until he was until he was killed. Golden sponge Cake Spider Man.
I have to say those host esk ads, if you have never read those, they are so delightful. You can read them online. If you want to go into a comic shop, you can just buy any old back issue and you'll likely find them. But the comic shop I used to work out, we actually did an exhibition of them because they are that legendary. So I love that pole. Okay, I wasn't sure who to pick, but now we're on a food theme, so I'm going to go for What about this one Spider Ramen Oh Spider Verse issue five
from twenty twenty. He comes from a future alternate timeline and he can just make as many bowls of Ramen as he wants, and he is a giant bowl of Ramen in a Spider Man suit, and he uses this power of infinite food to go around feeding the needy and vulnerable. Well, the legend and it was created by a fan named Steve Poole as part of a campaign when Marvel invited people to pitch their own additions to the Spider Man and it is like so funny, So yeah, I love that that was our food them too soon.
Thanks love for listening, Thank you. X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Gitsubsion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and Heidi A. Score moderator
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