Bee Ona

I’ve been watching a lot of steady state movies recently in the cinema and Madame Web was one of them. The way the movie was shot in long ranges, long cuts and clean colour grading is what made it a calm and peaceful watch for me.

The movie is about a 30-year-old paramedic who was made an orphan when her mother died giving birth to her.  Sounds traditional, but it’s not your average film – it is superhero-esque and made by Marvel, but it’s not just an average Marvel movie. 

Her being an orphan didn’t define her, it was just a part of who she is. What I think defined who she is, is her heart for protecting the people she cares about and her ability to reason slowly but still make some things work.

Cassandra (the main character) developed superpowers from a trauma she had at work. After this incident at work, she started having visions/ premonitions. It didn’t actually matter if she saw it clearly or not, but that’s when her intuition was utilised. 

She physically and mentally re-enacted incidents, she saw visions of bad things before they happened, and she was basically was made into a protector of the other main characters in the movie. The teenage three girls.

There was a step daughter, there was a rich kid, there was an undocumented young woman and they were about 16 years of age. They were all linked to the main character of the movie because of the very brief encounters they’ve had with her.

The incident at work was assessed and she did go to the doctors, but nothing was really clear, however as time went on, she realised that her superpower was built into her from birth. There was just a time it got triggered which was post accident. When she went back to her home to do some research, she understood a little bit more about who she was, after this she decided to take a trip to Peru where it all began (with her in her mother’s womb). Here she met her guide and her spiritual teacher. He was the one who made the promise to her mother when she was giving birth that he will be there when she came for answers and he was…appearing out of nowhere. 

It was actually quite a heart-warming part of the movie, because she got angry and upset about why her mother was selfish enough to bring her to this place whilst she was pregnant and died. He shared that in order to move forward, sometimes you have to go back to where you came from. She ended up going back to the moments her mother was in a forest hunting for the spider and the reason she did it in the first place. I think that’s where she really connected with her…because at the end of the day her mother did go to Peru for her. She didn’t want to allow the doctors to make ‘no’ her (Cassandra’s) destiny because as a foetus Cassandra was said to potentially end up having a neurological condition.

She ended up realising her mother healed her before she was born as the spider guides tried to save them both when attacked in the forest. This is how Cassandra got the spider super powers – because after all that was what the aim was for her mother, to ensure her offspring grew up without a disease. Then, the issue of addressing the villain proceeded. 

I think the movie was very light hearted even though it touched on a few sensitive topics such as mothers dying at birth and being undocumented. The message to me was very clear, and that’s that this is the life we live now. It is a little bit exaggerated but it isn’t too far from real life at all. An intuitive woman, a woman who uses her brain, a woman who has heart, a genuine woman can all succeed and come together to win the war.  

I think it was just enough action for those that want to be enriched, mildly excited and laugh a little bit.