I am an avowed Pepsi hater. It tastes gross. Coke is better. No, I will not be taking further questions.
But somehow, this Pepsi hater saw Madame Web at a theater so deep in the pocket of Big Pepsi that it not only exclusively served the foul drink, but the Pepsi logo was on the walls of the auditorium. And, reader, I’m glad this is where I screened the film—because this is the optimal way to watch this suboptimal superhero film, which practically screams “sponsored by Pepsi.” Kendall Jenner should send Sony a fruit basket, because Madame Web may have usurped her deeply offensive commercial for the title of “Worst Pepsi Ad of All Time.”
Madame Web is ostensibly the Y2K-era origin story of a clairvoyant superhero (Dakota Johnson), whose emergent powers were bestowed upon her in-utero by magic Amazonian arachnids. (You see, her mom was in the Amazon researching spiders right before she died…) But equally important as Cassie Webb’s journey toward understanding why she can now occasionally see an indeterminate amount of time into the future is Pepsi’s role in that journey.
