There are incredibly complicated, ancient, IP-related contractual reasons why Sony keep releasing these weird Spider-Man films without Spider-Man in them (hi, Morbius). Basically, they have to make a certain… actually, I don’t fully understand. Or care. The end of superheromovieaggedon cannot come swiftly enough so far as I am concerned. And films like Madame Web will surely do nothing but speed up this process.To the millions who do care about superheroes, though, this film is a highly contemptuous insult: and the fat cats at Sony (no doubt privately as exhausted by the prospect of making nothing but superhero films as the rest of us) would do well to remember that audience has paid for a lot of third quarter bonuses. AI will be watching this film with its feet up on the seat in front, maniacally laughing and thinking, “Wow, maybe this business is going to be easier to take over than I thought.”It is an insult, too, to a quite staggeringly talented cast – Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, Zosia Mamet, Adam Scott, Tahar Rahim – who are all given absolutely nothing to work with. There is not a single, even attempt at a joke or a one liner. There are two half, painfully slow action scenes. There were no advance screenings of Madame Web – wonder why? – so I got to read many of my swifter peers’ reviews as I finished my own. Many of them were one star reviews. My question to my swifter peers would be: what was the one star for?