Dakota Johnson has a sense of humor about her superhero movie Madame Web turning out to be a flop.
Addressing the intense criticism that’s been rained on the Spiderman spinoff from direct S.J. Clarkson — in which Johnson plays a New York paramedic who has psychic visions — the Fifty Shades of Grey star just laughed, imagining the headlines that would follow.
Dakota Johnson Calls Madame Web ‘F—ing Box Office Failure’
“Like, ‘Dakota Johnson Breaks Her Silence On Madame Web’s F—ing Box Office Failure,’” she told Bustle with a chuckle. “It’s like, ‘No, I’m not breaking any silence. I’m just talking.’”
As of this writing, Madame Web sits at 12% on Rotten Tomatoes‘ Tomatometer and at 57% for the audience score. Rolling Stone called it a “genuine Chernobyl disaster” while the Daily Beast dubs it “embarrassingly comical,” though IndieWire gives Johnson props for her “Johnson has a “rare gift for weaponizing social discomfort into sandpaper-dry comedy,” positing that “Madame Web threatens to become a real movie whenever it allows its star to revel in the fact that she doesn’t really want to be in it.”
Johnson says she understands why people didn’t like it.
“It was definitely an experience for me to make that movie,” she told Bustle. “I had never done anything like it before. I probably will never do anything like it again, because I don’t make sense in that world. And I know that now. But sometimes in this industry, you sign on to something, and it’s one thing and then as you’re making it, it becomes a completely different thing, and you’re like, ‘Wait, what?’ But it was a real learning experience, and of course it’s not nice to be a part of something that’s ripped to shreds, but I can’t say that I don’t understand.”
Reflecting more on the on-set experience to Entertainment Weekly, Johnson says she was surprised by the artificiality of it all.
“I’ve never really done a movie where you are on a blue screen, and there’s fake explosions going off, and someone’s going, ‘Explosion!’ and you act like there’s an explosion,” she said. “That to me was absolutely psychotic. I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to be good at all! I hope that I did an okay job!’ But I trusted [Clarkson]. She works so hard, and she has not taken her eyes off this movie since we started.”
The actress has also previously said that the script for Madame Web looked a lot different when she signed on from what it became later.
“There were drastic changes,” Johnson told TheWrap, again with a lighthearted laugh. “And I can’t even tell you what they were.”
In any case, we’re not likely to see Johnson in another superhero role for a very long time, if ever.
The film also stars Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Emma Roberts, Celeste O’Connor, Tahar Rahim, Adam Scott, and Zosia Mamet.
Madame Web is currently in theaters.
Main Image: Dakota Johnson in Madame Web. Credit: Sony Pictures Releasing
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