Dakota Johnson praised after addressing Madame Web being “ripped to shreds”

Kayla Harrington
Dakota Johnson as Madame Web

Dakota Johnson is being praised for her respectful response to the intense negative backlash Madame Web received.

It’s safe to say that the Sony superhero universe has gone off the tracks as its latest film — Madame Web — flopped in theaters.

Not only did the movie debut with an awful Rotten Tomato score and open with a worse box office than Sony’s previous flip Morbius, critics and audiences alike were not shy about their negative reviews on it.

However, Madame Web star Dakota Johnson has taken all the negativity in her stride and now she’s being praised by fans for her tactile response to the backlash.

Dakota Johnson explains Madame Web flop

The actress recently sat down with Bustle to discuss her life, career, and how she was taking the downfall of Madame Web.

Johnson explained that, while she’s not “surprised that this has gone down the way it has,” she sees the movie’s failure as a product of “decisions 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,” she continued. “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.”

Fans were quick to pull Johnson’s comments from the article and praise her for being so open about what they perceive as an ongoing problem in Hollywood.

“Dakota Johnson’s comment on the failure of Madame Web needs to be screamed from the rooftops,” one Twitter user wrote.

Another expressed how Johnson was saying “the quiet part out loud” while using a few quotes from the article highlighting how movies are bound to fail if they’re made by committees, ending their tweet with, “Told you it wasn’t the writers.”

Despite Johnson’s candor about Madame Web’s tragic downfall, it doesn’t seem like she wants to do a project like this ever again, despite rumors of a future Madame Web sequel, as 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.”

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About The Author

Kayla is a TV and Movies Writer at Dexerto. She's huge fan of Marvel (especially if Wanda Maximoff is involved), shows that make you laugh then cry, and any cooking show found on the Food Network. Before Dexerto, she wrote for Mashable, BuzzFeed, and The Mary Sue. You can contact her at kayla.harrington@dexerto.com