PRODUCT PLACEMENT

‘Madame Web’ Is One Huge, Terrible Pepsi Commercial. Why?

The soda company clearly cut a fat check to producers of the maligned film, and it shows. It also—and this is a high bar—just may be the silliest aspect of the movie.

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 also 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.

(Warning: Spoilers for Madame Web below.)

The soda’s iconography spills out through the movie, like a fountain machine depositing Pepsi into a Pepsi-branded cup. The camera regularly pans over the gigantic Pepsi-Cola factory sign in Long Island City as an establishing shot; this is Pepsi-Cola’s Queens, baby. When Cassie asks her best friend/fellow paramedic Ben Parker (Adam Scott, implicitly playing that Ben Parker) for a beer at a barbecue, he insists she drink a Pepsi instead. That’s a much safer choice, he says, since she recently suffered a heart attack—and also because Pepsi is funding the entire movie.

Pepsi-owned sister sodas make appearances too: Cassie and Ben sip on Mountain Dews as they chill in the break room, during what is maybe the movie’s most obnoxious scene. (Ben tells Cassie he’s “seeing someone new,” but when she asks her name, he awkwardly demures…because Sony doesn’t have the licensing rights for the name “May,” a.k.a. the future Aunt May Parker.)

Pepsi even ends up being the film’s greatest weapon. Madame Web’s climactic battle takes place atop the factory’s roof, with Cassie and her Spider-Girlies (Sydney Sweeney, Isabella Merced, and Celeste O’Connor) setting off fireworks to ward off Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), the Big Bad whose motivations are not worth explaining. Clearly none of these women has studied her Pepsi ad history if they’re playing with fireworks near a Pepsi factory, and unsurprisingly, things go awry. One ends up hitting that gigantic Pepsi sign at the wrong moment, knocking down the “P” and crushing Ezekiel to death. In a movie featuring multiple paramedics and four Spider-People, Pepsi saves—and takes—the most lives.

But Cassie doesn’t make it out of this battle unscathed. The Pepsi-Cola factory chaos knocks her into the East River, where she nearly dies. While she survives, she both is blinded and loses the use of her legs—key traits of the comic-book version of Madame Web, thus completing Cassie’s transformation. Screw Dr. Webb, Amazonian spider-researcher; Pepsi is Madame Web’s real mother.

I could go on about all the Pepsi cameos, but that would involve recapping nearly the entirety of this 116-minute movie. Instead, check out my fellow Web survivors on the web (ha!), where they’re delightfully dunking on all that Pepsi product placement.

I’ll leave you with a parting thought. Which soda features heavily in the impeccable Spider-Verse films, the best use of Sony’s fraught Spider-Man license? The superior soft drink: Coca-Cola.

Allegra FrankDeputy Entertainment Editor

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