The Most Controversial Movies Of 2024 So Far

Some comic book movies are initially greeted with excited anticipation only to be met by widespread disappointment. Months of bubbly enthusiasm quickly curdle into resentment over the underwhelming final product. «Madame Web,» by contrast, was a punchline from the very start of its marketing campaign. An iconic line about how «he was with my mom in the Amazon when she was researching spiders right before she died» quickly became a viral sensation for all the wrong reasons. Expectations were low for the production and the eventual movie still came in below those hopes. 

It didn’t help that the theatrical release was overshadowed by a barrage of mini-controversies over various statements given by Dakota Johnson during the «Madame Web» press tour. Johnson’s entertainingly idiosyncratic style of deadpan verbiage was a sharp contrast to other comic book movie leads, who only speak about their projects with breathless reverence. As a result, Johnson’s enjoyably flippant descriptions of experiences like shooting in front of a blue screen for the first time were interpreted to mean she despised «Madame Web» before anyone had even seen the movie. 

Discourse around Johnson’s press comments quickly became more popular than actually talking about «Madame Web.» Further controversy emerged when, just a day before the film’s premiere, it was revealed that the «mom in the Amazon» line wasn’t even in the final film. There was just no end to the whirlwind of negative controversies that plagued «Madame Web» even before its first public showings began.