Here are some photos of Dakota Johnson at the Mexico City premiere of Madame Web. Her cast did not join her – Dakota was pretty much on her own for this last promotional leg. She wore a vintage Luis Estevez gown in a beautiful blood red. Minus the bangs, I really like this look, although I do not understand why Dakota has leaned into “plunging necklines” so hard for this tour. Granted, she has the figure for it, but it’s just sort of weird.

Anyway, Madame Web is being savaged by critics. As of this writing, it’s sitting at 18% on Rotten Tomatoes. The best mini-reviews I’ve read online are that “it’s not as bad or dumb as Morbius but it’s not good.” Meanwhile, Dakota is already trying to distance herself from the mess in real time, as she’s promoting it. She told The Wrap that the script drastically changed after she signed onto it:

It’s unclear what the original story was going to be — the actress herself doesn’t even remember — but Johnson notes that the script she read when she signed onto the film is definitely not the script that made it to screens.

“There were drastic changes,” Johnson told TheWrap with a laugh. “And I can’t even tell you what they were.”

The bigger challenge in filming “Madame Web” came from the fact that Johnson’s character can see the future, because it meant filming multiple versions of one scene, with only small differences in the shots. According to Johnson, it increased the workload for everyone.

“It added so many different camera set-ups, like triple the amount of work,” she explained. “And it was very complex, and there’s only like minor differences between each version of the same scene, so it was like puzzle pieces, and really paying attention to what moment we’re in, and what angle we’re in, and continuity and things like that.”

The actress admitted that she definitely got lost a few times in trying to keep track of exactly what they were shooting, but director SJ Clarkson had her covered. “I did. Yes, I did get very lost and SJ always knew exactly where we were, which was really incredible,” she said.

[From The Wrap]

This is a near-constant thing these days, with superhero movies and – rather famously – with the Star Wars spinoff franchises. They don’t bother locking in a script months before they start preproduction. They have a release date and a director and that’s it. So many of these huge, expensive production issues wouldn’t happen if they simply bothered to give a f–k about quality screenplays from the start.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.