If you thought Dakota Johnson was frustrated and unhappy with Madame Web, you didn’t think so. Before the movie came out, she looked like she knew it wouldn’t be a success and spoke in “chopped-up phrases” to emphasize her rejection of the movie. Some even said that she didn’t know what she was going to star in, or rather didn’t know that it was part of Sony’s movie universe, which is not part of the MCU.
She was unlikeable during the press tour and often reiterated that she “doesn’t know about the universe” and “has no passion” for the project. Perhaps if Madame Web hadn’t turned out to be such a flop, the attitude towards Dakota Johnson would have been different, and she would have been accused of “acting unprofessionally.” But in this story, she managed to float on the wave and not go down with the movie.
So, if you thought you did, you didn’t. And in an interview with Bustle, Dakota Johnson confirmed that she was disappointed with the movie. When asked what she thought of the bad reviews for Madame Web, she replied, “Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that this has gone down the way it has.”
Dakota Johnson is not a Marvel fan. And while her appearance in Madame Web was iconic, it didn’t help. A poorly-paced plot let the movie down, lots of commercials, and a weak story. So Madame Web turned out to be a disappointment. And not just for Dakota Johnson. But she got more out of it than she lost. Her popularity went up, according to Google Trends. And now she has new stories to tell.
But what does Johnson think of the failure?
She answers that in an interview with Bustle in her typical fashion, “It’s so hard to get movies made, and in these big movies that get made … decisions are being made by committees, and art does not do well when it’s made by committee.”
I can only add that Johnson is remarkably right. Because a good movie is not an algorithm (of course, there are script tropes that many directors and writers use), a movie becomes iconic or at least just “good” for other reasons: an auteur’s vision, new ideas, and a pinch of talent. But there’s no room to do it right in a world where a movie is overseen by a committee that tries to subject everything to an algorithm.
“My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not,” Johnson says. And it’s hard to disagree. Why would studio bosses think it was okay to fool the audience and try to show them anything but spiced up with a trailer and a couple of references?
“You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms,” says Dakota Johnson. And so. She’s remarkably right here. You really can’t because art is so much more than that. So, let’s hope that Madame Web’s failure was not in vain and that studios can learn lesson.
