Sony boss defends worst films of 2024 - ‘Madame Web’ & ‘Kraven The Hunter’ - takes shots at critics
Sony CEO says that critics are to blame for ‘Madame Web’ and ‘Kraven The Hunter’ flopping. Here’s why he’s talking utter nonsense.
2024 has seen plenty of terrific films released and a handful of terrible ones too.
Take your pick: Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Borderlands, Mufasa, Salem’s Lot, The Crow... All underperformed at the box office and underwhelmed audiences.
There were some audacious big swings like Joker: Folie à Deux and Megalopolis, which – to continue with the baseball metaphor – still failed to be home runs and struck out.
Like every year, some 2024 duds did fall into the “so bad they’re fun / not worth getting too angry about” category, while others simply served as chewing gum for the brain which made the competition shine brighter by comparison. And that's fine: they can’t all be gems and there’s nothing wrong with a bit of dumb escapist fun from time to time.
However, Sony really pulled out all the stops this year, with three Spider-Man spin-offs that showed that nothing good ever comes from churning out creatively barren dross for the sake of maintaining IP rights.
There was Madame Web, Venom: The Last Dance and Kraven The Hunter – three of worst films you’re likely to have seen on the big screen this year.
Now, the CEO of Sony Pictures has laid the blame for the box office failure of Madame Web and Kraven The Hunter at critics’ doorsteps. (He omitted Venom: The Last Dance, as the third and final instalment in the Tom Hardy-led trilogy did do good numbers at the global box office.)
Tony Vinciquerra, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, blamed the critical reactions to the films for their dismal commercial performance.
“Madame Web underperformed in the theatres because the press just crucified it,” Vinciquerra said. “It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix. For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of Kraven and Madame Web, and the critics just destroyed them.”
He added: “These are not terrible films. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason.”
Sure, it’s all the critics’ faults. It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Kraven The Hunter was plotless nonsense and that Madame Web was a shameless Pepsi commercial masquerading as a superhero flick drained of all vitality, imagination and thrills, written by the same duo behind the likes of The Gods of Egypt, The Last Witch Hunter and Morbius – writers who are actually making ChatGPT look like a scriptwriting powerhouse.
“For some reason”?
Perhaps that reason is that these movies were irredeemably soulless and showed Sony hitting absolute rock bottom by focusing less on entertainment potential and more on bean counting.
Critics were right to call out how genuinely maddening it is that anyone involved thought these were good enough to charge for a cinema ticket, and Vinciquerra’s comments are the frustrating equivalent of “we made this for the fans and not the critics”. You know, that phrase trotted out by directors who know they’re behind a terrible film and fail to understand that the reason critics do their jobs is because they are fans in the first place.
Vinciquerra did, however, concede that the company’s Spider-Man Universe cannot carry on in the way it has been for much longer.
“I do think we need to rethink it, just because it’s snake-bitten,” he said. “If we put another one out, it’s going to get destroyed, no matter how good or bad it is.”
Again, there’s a reason for “snake-bitten”... If you deliver lazy, sub-par movies, don’t expect plaudits for it.
Do better, Sony. And don’t blame the critics for your failed strategy. We didn’t decide to collectively slam your output for funsies during our monthly Illuminati-style get-togethers; we were just honest about relaying that moviegoers deserve better than to waste their hard-earned cash on a hollow, cookie cutter snoozefests when there are far better flicks are out there.
Loathe or defend Megalopolis, at least it was trying to do... something.
Thankfully, 2024 is reportedly the end of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe spin-off series.
So long Venom, Morbius, Madame Web and Kraven. The unvarnished truth is that critical reception wasn’t the “why?” behind these flops; it was Sony chucking bags of money at projects that weren’t properly handled, the sign of a studio refusing to admit that wasting resources on half-baked projects all in the name of retaining ownership and licensing of the Spider-Man IP just wasn't a good creative or business endeavour.
Untangle yourself from this web and see you next year.
