Dakota Johnson Opens Up Regarding Her ‘Madame Web’ Future: “Audiences Will Always Be Able To Sniff Out Bullsh*t”
Just under a month ago, ‘Madame Web’ hit theaters, and it’s been a disaster. The movie tanked at the box office, only making $6 million on its opening day. It’s not even close to competing with popular films like ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ or even ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.’ Its only hope now is to do better than ‘Morbius.’ Critics have trashed it, giving it a measly 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while audiences weren’t much kinder, rating it at 57%, labeling it as “rotten.”
The story is all over the place, and there’s a gripe about false advertising too. The trailers showed Spider-Women with powers and costumes, but in the movie, we don’t even get their origin stories. Fans are disappointed, and there are plenty of theories why it flopped—some blame the unfamiliarity with the source material, others point fingers at the actors and director. Dakota Johnson, in an interview with Bustle, was blunt about why the movie failed, saying:
It’s so hard to get movies made, and in these big movies that get made — and it’s even starting to happen with the little ones, which is what’s really freaking me out — decisions are being made by committees, and art does not do well when it’s made by committee. Films are made by a filmmaker and a team of artists around them. You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms. My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not. Audiences will always be able to sniff out bullsht. Even if films start to be made with AI, humans aren’t going to fcking want to see those.
It looks like Johnson is pointing fingers at the executives, and she’s not the only one doing so lately. What’s noteworthy is that Bob Iger blamed the flop of ‘The Marvels’ on the absence of executives on set. Johnson also somewhat confirmed that ‘Madame Web’ is for the time being her only foray into superhero waters.
But it was definitely an experience for me to make that movie. I had never done anything like it before. I probably will never do anything like it again because I don’t make sense in that world. And I know that now. But sometimes in this industry, you sign on to something, and it’s one thing and then as you’re making it, it becomes a completely different thing, and you’re like, Wait, what? But it was a real learning experience, and of course it’s not nice to be a part of something that’s ripped to shreds, but I can’t say that I don’t understand.
It’s notable that at the beginning of her press tour for the movie, Johnson said she’d be open to doing a sequel. I suppose things have changed now, perhaps due to time passing and the box office numbers sinking in.
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