X-Men ‘97, Madame Web and Adapting Comics
Last week the finale for X-Men ‘97 was released…and so was Madame Web.
Today I’ve got a twofer. Last week X-Men ‘97 wrapped up season one and Madame Web was released on Netflix and we could not have gotten two more disparate comic adaptations. After watching both, and having a week to mull them over, it got me thinking about comic book adaptations as a whole. Why do some work so well? And why do some fall flat on their face? I think X-Men and Madame Web offer the perfect case study. Let’s start with a quick review of each.
Every Saturday morning as a kid I would brush my teeth, grab a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and turn on the tv to watch my favorite superheroes go fight the villain of the week. This included Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, and X-Men (as well as a slew of others). Never did I imagine that X-Men, my X-men, would come back close to thirty years later and not only be as good, but surpass the original.
In preparation for the release of X-Men ‘97, I went back and rewatched all 78 episodes of the original series, and to my surprise, it all (except for season five, which had a time and budget issues) held up. I dove right back into that world. I immediately cared for all those characters just as I had as a kid. I felt the pain of the mutants. And I was concerned that ‘97 couldn’t live up to it.
Boy was I wrong. So why did X-Men work? First of all, they hired fans of the original series. You could tell right from the beginning that writer Beau DeMayo and the rest of team were not just random hires, but were fans that cares about these characters. They time and time again took moments straight from the comics and brought them to life. They continued stories from the original series. They brought back major and minor characters that viewers got a kick out of seeing. The goal was clear, let’s take the legacy of this show and bring it forward with a bigger budget and make it the best it can be.
What I admired most about this adaptation is that it did not shy away from the story of mutants being a place holder for marginalized communities. In 2024, as we come up on an election, as we we see the horrors of genocide in Gaza, as our country seems as divided as ever, X-Men ‘97 addresses the issues we face today. It does not accuse people. It does not antagonize people. But it does give some of us a group that we can relate to, and hopefully reveals to others that maybe they can act more kindly to fellow man.
Also they are taking stories directly from the comics. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I am not someone who is bothered when liberties are taken when adapting a story from the comic to the screen. Even ‘97 couldn’t adapt the comics perfectly. But they did a dang good job. Episode after episode viewers could easily point to moments taken directly from the comics. And they took decades of story arches and made them digestible. Which is tough to do with a property that’s been around as long as the X-Men have.
All this being said, X-Men ‘97 has jumped to top five Marvel adaptations for me and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Now on to Madame Web.
This movie is everything X-Men ‘97 is not. 🚨SPOILERS AHEAD🚨
Last week my wife and I watched Madame Web more out of curiosity than out of actual desire. I had heard all the negativity. I heard all the claims that it was “the worst movie ever”. But I had to see for myself. I actually came in with the view that it can’t possibly be as bad as everyone says. I was oh so wrong.
I’ll start by saying that I remain confused by Sony’s decision to create a universe out of their Spider-Man related characters and leave Spider-Man himself out of any of these projects. By the end of this year, we will have three Venom movies, Morbius, Madame Web and Kraven. And they have plans to create shows on Amazon (Nicholas Cage is set to return as Spider-Man Noir) as well as rumors for a Don Cheadle led Hypno Hustler and an El Muerto movie. And as far as we know, Spider-Man will not be appearing in any of these. It is simply baffling.
Ok that’s out of the way. Why am I so low on this movie? First of all it was simply the story and the writing. Line after line my wife and I would burst out laughing simply at the absurdity of what was said. Decisions made by the main characters seemed so far fetched at times. There is a scene where the three future Spider-Women get on a table in a diner and start dancing for the attention of some high school boys. I will admit, I was not a teenage girl in the early 2000s, but this could not have been something that was regularly occurring. Every line felt like an extreme stereotype of teenage girls.
At times it also felt as though Dakota Johnson’s character, Cassie Webb, had never interacted with people. Cassie is a New York paramedic. Presumably her position would put her in contact with many people who would show thanks and gratitude for her services. In one scene, a little girl tries to give her a drawing as thanks for saving her mom. Cassie is utterly confused as to what to do in this situation. This can’t be the first time she’s interacted with a child! You could also tell at times that this was probably just a pay check for Johnson. She has been vocal about it not being a great experience for her and it shows in her performance.
The main villain of the story was Ezekiel Sims, who’s aim was to kill the three Spider-Women (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor) because he had a vision that they would kill him in the future. First of all, almost every scene that he was in had a huge issue with the ADR. ADR being when an actor re records his lines to then be synced up with the movements of his mouth on screen. It felt like I was watching a dubbed movie at times. In the first scene the character was talking and his mouth wasn’t even moving. My assumption is that after filming, they decided to change some of the dialogue. But they must have changed a lot, because this occurred throughout the entire movie. As a villain, he also was not that intimidating. In the final battle, if you want to call it that, Cassie was able to take him down fairly easily. He end up dying now instead of in the future. And we actually NEVER SEE THE GIRLS GET THEIR SPIDER POWERS! This was insanity. The marketing for this movie showed scenes with all of them suited up and fighting, which actually looked pretty cool. But all that footage was just used for visions of the future. It felt like such a waste.
Madame Web feels like a movie that was made by a studio simply wanting to keep the rights to its intellectual property. It hired writers who have an awful track record. It deviated so far away from the comics that it’s barely an adaptation in my mind. And it used the excuse of it being set in the early 2000s to justify bad editing and cinematography.
So what’s the take away? Comic book movies took off with the first X-Men and Spider-Man movies. And then even more so with Iron Man in 2008. But all have definitely not been successes. We look at the high points (Winter Soldier, Infinity War, Ragnarok) and often forget about some of the low points (The Dark World, Iron Man 2).
Now that superhero movies have become their own genre (though I would argue that a plethora of genres can be explored within the medium of superhero), companies feel the need to churn out these projects to hopefully make as much money as possible. But sometimes that leads to low budgets, creative oversight by people who should not be in the creative process, and rushed timelines.
The movies and shows that have truly succeeded have leaned on the storytelling. They make us care about the characters. They give us big stakes and memorable villains. The projects that haven’t worked are poorly written and have villains whose names can’t even be remembered (looking at you Malekith).
Creators need time. Time to write these stories. Time to do the research. Time to create whole new worlds. The constant churn that is being required by corporations is only harming the quality.
X-Men took time to get right. They had years to work on the script, to get every detail perfect. Madame Web was clearly thrown together with little care. Marvel Studios seems to be realizing this, as they are soon lowering their yearly output to focus on quality. Hopefully this becomes the norm. Sony still has Kraven coming out this year (it just got delayed till December because they think it will be a great holiday movie 😂), which I do not have high hopes for. But Deadpool and Wolverine is the only Marvel Studios movie out this year and I can’t wait for it.
In summation, give creators more budget and more time to do their best work ad stop micromanaging!
That’s all for this installment! See you all next week!
Raj