Moviegoers were bummed to discover that an infamous line heard in the trailer of Madame Web is not in the actual film.
Madame Web is based on the Marvel comics superhero known as Cassandra "Cassie" Webb, played by Dakota Johnson.
In the trailer, we see Webb as a paramedic who becomes a reluctant hero after an accident leads to her acquiring psychic abilities as a clairvoyant.
With her new ability to witness future events in the "spider world," Webb wields her power to prevent tragedies and fight her nemesis, Ezekiel Sims, played by Tahar Rahim.
Regarding the film's villain, Webb provides Ezekiel's backstory in the trailer with a wordy line that audiences immediately thought was so contrived and clumsy, that it instantly went viral.
The line goes:
"He was in the Amazon with my mum when she was researching spiders right before she died."
You can hear it in the clip below.
MADAME WEB – Official Trailer (HD)youtu.be
It was so bad, that it was so good.
According to Vulture, the iconic line from the trailer was nixed from the film.
The media outlet confirmed all of the words are used in the movie, but not necessarily delivered in that order and all at once.
@johnathanmb32/X
In the film, Webb does convey to her friends, played by Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O'Connor, and Isabela Merced, that Ezekiel was with her mother in the Amazon and researching spiders right before she died.
But in the scene, Webb succinctly says of her mom:
"She was researching spiders."
By that point, the audience had already seen Ezekiel with her mother before she died at the beginning of the movie, so there was no need for the protagonist to rehash everything.
The clunky line from the trailer was inserted as ADR, or Automated Dialogue Replacement, in the preview to establish everything you needed to know about the film's villain in one breath.
The tactic of movie studios cutting expository dialogue heard in trailers sparked a conversation.
Moviegoers shared their own theories.
Still, fans felt slighted after the film studio denied them the tongue-twisty line.
Madame Webb, directed by S. J. Clarkson, is a Marvel-affiliated movie distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing and is the fourth film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU).
The film was released today in theaters.
@jaketapoer/Bluesky
@BillAckman/Twitter