Madame Web Unlocked A Hidden Talent Within Dakota Johnson
Dakota Johnson was studying acting in the Amazon with her mom when she was researching spiders just before she died.
S.J. Clarkson's new film "Madame Web" is due out in theaters on February 14, 2024, and I couldn't be more excited. In 2023, superhero films more or less officially died out, as high-profile releases from both Marvel Studios and the DC arm of Warner Bros. fizzled spectacularly, generating far less money and enthusiasm than the genre's flicks from just a few years previous. It will take several years, however, for the industry to pivot away from superheroes entirely, and there are still going to be some interesting experiments/absurdities to enjoy while on our way out the door. Madame Web is an obscure supporting player from Spider-Man comics, but the industry has done such a good job of scraping the barrel for popular superhero characters that it now has to rely on these minor characters for blockbuster fodder.
Witnessing the contraction of a genre will be exhilarating.
Dakota Johnson will play Madame Web, a heroine with clairvoyant powers, and she will team up with a trio of Spider-Women (Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O'Connor, Isabela Merced) to fight an evil version of Spider-Man (Tahar Rahim). Naturally, she and her co-stars will have a few fight scenes, and the cast likely had to do extensive working out and martial arts training to get into shape for a superhero flick. Johnson also revealed in a recent interview with EW that she also did a small amount of stunt driving for "Madame Web." Stunt driving, it seems, is something she was preternaturally good at.
She was doing stunt driving in the Amazon with her mom when she was researching spiders just before she died
Judging from the previews for "Madame Web," Johnson spends a portion of the movie working as a paramedic for the New York Fire Department. Adam Scott seems to play her co-pilot and might also be Spider-Man's Uncle Ben (although that detail hasn't yet been confirmed by the studio). This means that Johnson had to learn how to drive an ambulance. It seems she also did some high-octane driving in multiple vehicles during a single dramatic day during the film's production. Johnson said:
"I got to do a day of stunt driving work, and I'm really good at it, it seems! [...] I mean, I can do some really wild things with a car. I drove an ambulance. I drove a taxicab. I drove everything in the movie — except for flying through the air and out of a building. But other than that, I'm like, 'Watch out, Tom Cruise.'"
Johnson has appeared in several action-adjacent films in the past, including "21 Jump Street," or perhaps "Black Mass," but "Madame Web" will be the first time she stars as an action heroine.
One cannot speak to the quality of "Madame Web" until we see it, of course. It could be the best superhero movie to date, or the worst ever made. At the very least, Johnson got a taste for stunt driving, and may find herself, in only a few more years, leading her own "Mission: Impossible"-style action franchise where she does her own stunts. After all, Tom Cruise used to star in a wide variety of comedies, dramas, and romances before settling into the "Mission: Impossible" groove late in his career. Perhaps Johnson will follow a similar arc.