So far the 2024 release schedule has only delivered one superhero movie: Madame Web, which starred Dakota Johnson as the clairvoyant Cassandra Webb and took place within Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSMU). The movie was panned by critics, with CinemaBlend’s Madame Web review giving just two stars out of five. Johnson has since admitted that she wasn’t surprised Madame Web was “ripped to shreds,” and said that she “probably will never do anything like it again.” Now Russell Crowe, an actor who knows his way around the superhero genre, has given his blunt response over Johnson’s disappointment at how her Madame Web experience turned out.
Crowe has already played Jor-El in Man of Steel and Zeus in Thor: Love and Thunder, and he’ll be seen later this year in the upcoming superhero movie Kraven the Hunter, another SSMU installment, as Nikolai Kravinoff, Kraven’s estranged father. During a conversation about his latest movie, The Exorcism, GQ brought up Dakota Johnson’s prior comments about Madame Web, including how these tentpole superhero movies can feel like art “made by a committee,” and the publication asked the Gladiator alum what his experience has been like on these kinds of productions. He answered:
I don’t want to make any comments to what anybody else might have said or what their experience is, but… you’re bringing out the impish quality of my humour. [Laughs.] You’re telling me you signed up for a Marvel movie, and some fucking universe for cartoon characters... and you didn’t get enough pathos? Not quite sure how I can make this better for you. It’s a gigantic machine, and they make movies at a certain size. And you know, I’ve experienced that on the DC side with Man of Steel, Zack Snyder, and I’ve experienced it on the Marvel side via Disney with Thor: Love and Thunder. And I’ve also experienced the [Sony-produced] Marvel dark universe with Kraven the Hunter. These are jobs. You know: here’s your role, play the role. If you’re expecting this to be some kind of life-changing event, I just think you’re here for the wrong reasons.
Russell Crowe really didn’t pull any punches here. While there’s certainly no shortage of superhero movies that have been well received by critics, the actor’s all too aware that these kinds of tentpole pictures aren’t going to be the most artistic of cinematic offerings.
In other words, Crowe thinks Johnson shouldn’t have walked into Madame Web expecting it was going to be something like a Best Picture nominee at the Oscars, although that honor was bestowed to a superhero for the first time in 2018 for Black Panther. Regardless, Crowe knows his job is to perform the role he’s been cast for, and anything beyond that is out of his hands, assuming he’s not a producer and/or director on the project.
Despite Madame Web being a critical and commercial disappointment (it only made $100.3 million worldwide off a budget somewhere between $80-100 million), it ended up taking the #1 spot in Netflix’s Top 10 movies in the United States in late May. Still, given its performance and Dakota Johnson’s thoughts on this acting gig, it’s probably safe to assume Madame Web 2 isn’t in the cards. As for Kraven the Hunter, along with Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing the title character, Russell Crowe’s costars include Ariana DeBose as Calypso, Fred Hechinger as The Chameleon, Alessandro Nivola as The Rhino and Christopher Abbott as The Foreigner.
Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13. It will arrive a little under two months after the next SSMU movie, Venom: The Last Dance.
