Ben Parker

Madame Web is a two-hour trailer for the movie you think you’re watching, but actually aren’t. If that’s confusing, welcome to the world of Madame Web, where everyone—the characters, the actors, the audience, and everyone in between—is confused about basically everything, all of the time. It’s a film that sets specific expectations in terms of story and payoff, proceeds to seed and tease those payoffs throughout the movie, and then never delivers on them. When a film has to pretend to be something it’s not to keep you…

Image: Sony Pictures/MarvelEver since Sony revealed it was working on a solo movie for Madame Web, folks have had questions. Why her? How is this going to connect to whichever Spider-Man is swinging around now?io9 Interview: Oscar Isaac Was 'All In' on Moon KnightIf you’ve watched the trailer, one of the questions may be when this movie is set. Superhero movies typically keep things in the relative present, but Entertainment Weekly’s recent preview notes that Madame Web is set in 2003. That effectively makes it the first…

When the Ultimate Marvel line launched 24 years ago, it wanted to bring Marvel’s heroes back to their roots, a modern world for modern titans to shape. In the last two and a half decades it lived, thrived, died, and was quietly reborn—but only now is Marvel taking the reigns on what shaping that rebirth should be, in a world with very different wants and needs than the last new Age of Heroes.io9 Interview: Oscar Isaac Was 'All In' on Moon KnightThe sense of yearning for something subsumes this week’s relaunch of Ultimate…