Dakota Johnson REACTS to Madame Web's Negative Reviews, Box Office Failure: 'I'll Never Do It Again'

Dakota Johnson opened up about the critical and box office failure of Madame Web. The film, which released last month, marked her first superhero film. The actress played the titular character in the film. Madame Web got a 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was slammed by the critics as well. The film also failed to impress fans, resulting in a disappointing box office collection. Speaking about it, Dakota confessed she is not surprised with the way things have panned out.

Speaking with Bustle, Dakota said, “Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that this has gone down the way it has.” She added, “It’s so hard to get movies made, and in these big movies that get made — and it’s even starting to happen with the little ones, which is what’s really freaking me out — decisions are being made by committees, and art does not do well when it’s made by committee.”

“Films are made by a filmmaker and a team of artists around them. You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms. My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not. Audiences will always be able to sniff out bullsh*t. Even if films start to be made with AI, humans aren’t going to f*cking want to see those,” she explained.

Dakota admitted that she has realised she doesn’t belong to the superhero world and she might not return to it anytime soon. “It was definitely an experience for me to make that movie. 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,” she added.

Dakota Johnson played the role of Cassandra Webb, also known as Madame Web, in the film. In the film, Cassandra was initially a paramedic and gained psychic abilities after a near death experience that enables her to see future events. Her character’s first comic book appearance was in The Amazing Spider-Man in 1980, where she was originally depicted as an elderly woman with myasthenia gravis connected to a life support system resembling a spider web. In the movie, Johnson played the younger version of the character, featuring a fresh origin story. The storyline also involved her passing on her psychic abilities to Julia Carpenter, portrayed by Sydney Sweeney, who plays Spider-Woman in the Sony film.