Sony’s Madame Web opened recently in cinemas and as expected from the trailers, widely received negative reviews. The film featured Dakota Johnson as the titular Madame Web alongside Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, and Isabella Merced as various versions of Spider-Women. The film is part of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe a.k.a the SSU.
While Madame Web was expected to be bad based on the trailers, fans who ended up going for the film could not believe that the film was much worse than their expectations. The film reportedly made a huge blunder even while placing their own product in a scene. A YouTuber pointed out that the Sony PSP shown in the film could not have existed as the film is set in 2003 while the device came out in 2005. Spoilers ahead for the film.
Sony’s Major Error With PSP Product Placement
The Dakota Johnson starrer Madame Web has been widely regarded as one of the worst superhero films of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. While the SSU, as it has been called, has never been known for its great writing or hits, many regarded 2022’s Morbius as the franchise’s rock bottom. However, fans were proven wrong when Madame Web came out.
Criticisms for the film included the writing, dialogue, some performances, and the lack of Spider-Women actually donning the suits in the film. The film is reportedly set in 2003, that is before the events of Morbius and Venom. In her video review for Madame Web, popular YouTuber Amanda The Jedi criticized the film’s setting as being pointless.
The YouTuber mentioned that the year 2003 did not hold any significance for the SSU as Tom Holland’s Spider-Man was reportedly born in 2001 and the Venom films take place much later. The film’s plot also reportedly had no connection to any incident occurring in 2003. Hence, the year of the setting seemed to be irrelevant to the plot of the film.
The content creator also noticed a huge error made by Sony in their product placement. According to Amanda The Jedi, a scene in the film shows a passenger playing on a Sony PSP, which reportedly came out in 2005. The Sony PlayStation Portable was reportedly launched in North American markets in March 2005 (via Sony’s Press Release).
This makes the setting of the film in 2003 even more bizarre and irrelevant. While Sony’s PSP was released in Japan before being available in North America and PAL, it was still released in December 2004. The film’s events are nowhere near the existence of the PSP, which proves that the writers and makers of Madame Web did not put enough thought into making the film.
Madame Web Has More Product Placements In Bizarre Places
Sony’s Madame Web has gained the reputation of being one of those films that people watch because it was so bad it was funny. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 13%, the film became the lowest-grossing film in the SSU, which only had low critical scores throughout. The film was also reportedly projected to be a box-office bomb as it only earned $51.9 million since its release (via The Numbers).
While the writing and dialogues were criticized by many, Amanda The Jedi specifically mentioned the bizarre use of product placement in the film. Apart from the blunderous use of Sony’s PSP in the film, the creator also mentioned the use of Pepsi in the film. A huge billboard with the Pepsi-Cola logo is reportedly the setting of the climax of the film.
The YouTuber Amanda The Jedi mentioned about the Pepsi logo in the climax,
“I have never seen product placement this egregious and absurd since a Transformers movie. It’s almost a work of art in its own right…I don’t know if I have ever seen a product placement have such a bearing on the climax of the movie more so than I have seen it here.”
She also mentioned how the logo indirectly becomes the cause of Dakota Johnson’s character’s paralysis in the film as the ‘S’ in the logo falls on her after she defeats the antagonist.
