\n<\/p>\n
Ricky Valero walked into a mostly empty showing of \u201cMadame Web\u201d with a bucket of popcorn and an open mind.<\/p>\n
He had some idea of what he was getting into. The movie, which stars Dakota Johnson as a clairvoyant character from the Spider-Man comics<\/a>, has been gleefully panned in the week since its release.<\/p>\n The reviews were lousy, with critics calling the movie \u201ca genuine Chernobyl-level disaster<\/a>\u201d that is \u201cfull of bad dialogue delivered badly<\/a>.\u201d The box office numbers were somehow worse, landing \u201cMadame Web\u201d among the lowest ticket sales ever<\/a> for a superhero movie.<\/p>\n The movie has been jeered on social media, where Mr. Valero, 37, had been seeing negative posts about it for weeks. But when he attended a showing on Thursday at a theater in Nashville, he was pleasantly surprised.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a level of terrible that can be enjoyable,\u201d he said, adding that he would rate the movie three out of five stars despite some cheesy dialogue. When he voiced mild appreciation for the movie on X, the responses were so vicious that he ended up muting them.<\/p>\n \u201cYou feel like you\u2019re standing alone on an island,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Sony\u2019s latest addition to the Spider-Man franchise has been inspiring memes for months. But after a dismal first week in theaters, it has come to occupy an odd perch in popular culture: It\u2019s dominating online conversation, but not drawing all that many viewers to theaters.<\/p>\n Some criticism of a known commodity like the Spider-Man franchise can be a sign of a healthy brand, according to Cristel Antonia Russell, a professor of marketing at the Graziadio Business School at Pepperdine University. \u201cIt\u2019s free P.R.,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cIt shows that consumers are engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n But while \u201cBarbie\u201d managed both meme dominance<\/a> and box-office success<\/a>, \u201cMadame Web\u201d does not appear to have pulled off the same feat. According to Sony, the movie was on track to sell $17.6 million<\/a> in tickets during its opening weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cMadame Web\u201d started functioning as an online punching bag pretty much the moment its trailer was released in November. A line of clunky exposition delivered in monotone by Ms. Johnson became a meme: \u201cHe was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.\u201d (The line did not end up<\/a> in the movie.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Then came a press tour in which Ms. Johnson issued typically deadpan<\/a> responses that were sometimes startling in their ambivalence.<\/p>\n \u201cI was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know if this is going to be good at all!\u2019\u201d she told Entertainment Weekly<\/a> of the film\u2019s blue-screen sequences. (She added that she trusted the movie\u2019s director, S.J. Clarkson.) In a recent interview with MagicFM<\/a>, she said she had not yet seen the movie because she does not like to watch her own films: \u201cI don\u2019t know when I\u2019ll see it. Someday.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Since the movie\u2019s release, social media users have complained about its costumes<\/a>, its editing<\/a>, its frequent Pepsi product placement<\/a> and the thinness of its villain\u2019s back story<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Valero detected an element of misogyny in internet users\u2019 eagerness to criticize superhero movies \u2014 like \u201cMadame Web\u201d or \u201cThe Marvels\u201d \u2014 that have a female director and stars. \u201cI\u2019m tired of these type of movies with women leading the way flopping at the box office<\/a>,\u201d he said. He worries it will prevent studios like Sony and Marvel from giving women more opportunities to helm superhero movies.<\/p>\n The criticism may also reflect a fatigue with superhero movies<\/a>, especially among the prestige cinema crowd, said Jordan Crucchiola, the host of the \u201cFeeling Seen\u201d podcast. \u201cIt feels like a snotty class kind of getting the object they\u2019ve been hoping for that they could just drop out of a 10-story window.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There are signs that even the internet\u2019s harshest critics may be tiring of dunking on \u201cMadame Web.\u201d<\/p>\n As the movie enters its second week in theaters, some fans have taken to semi-ironically reframing the movie not as a flop but as a future cult classic. \u201cJust saw Madame Web and it was terrible and I loved every second of it,\u201d one fan wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n