It's finally here, Sony's first film in their cinematic universe of Spider-Man characters without any actual connection to Spider-Man. Venom stars Tom Hardy and is supposed to sport the darker side of the superhero film genre as it follows the alien symbiote Venom in a story that somewhat resembles the character's 90s storyarc: Lethal Protector. This movie in addition serves as the origins of the symbiote and has Eddie Brock as the alien's primary host for the film. Right off the bat I am going to say this, Venom had enjoyable moments, but it is a BAD movie. What's the biggest shame is that were this handled by a company with a bit more competence and understanding of the character this movie would have been good. There is enough dedication to see that both the production team and Hardy gave 100 percent to make as best a movie as they could given the deadline of a little over a year. Before I go and point out all the holes in this sinking ship of a film, I am going to talk a bit about the things I liked.
This film's greatest asset is its visual effects. Venom has never looked better on film (not exactly a high bar when your only competition is Topher Grace in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3). His action sequences (with exception to the final fight with the symbiote Riot which felt like a live action rendition of a Jackson Pollock painting) where fantastic and Venom is brutal (within the confines of a PG-13 rating, a silver bullet that honestly prevents the film from elevating the film from D status to C). Tom Hardy does a decent enough job acting in it, but it's very clear that he's far more invested in the character of Venom than he is of Eddie Brock, as Hardy's worst scenes in the movie are while he is Eddie (which sadly is most of the movie). The best part of the movie though was not the movie at all, but the post credit scene (not the one with Woddy Harrelson in the worst wig I have ever seen outside a circus) that previewed 6 minutes of the upcoming Into The Spiderverse. Otherwise, in all honesty, this is probably about as far as the positives go for this film because despite having a pretty outstanding and all star cast, this movie can't help but flail as it falls to the ground like the ship that brings the symbiote to earth in the film's beginning.
The best comparison of Venom I can think of is that this is the Transformers of the superhero genre, which only gets more awkward because I am fairly certain that Transformers already holds that place. This film is held up solely by it's visual effects, the rest of it is pretty bad. However, even the effects suffer because the violence is forced to be tame. You can really tell that the director of this film had really intended on it being rated R, so most of Venom's action sequences while he's fighting human feel like they are missing something crucial, and that something is a large quantity of gore. You can tell that Sony slapping that PG-13 rating on this film was the final silver bullet to put this monster movie down as Sony tried to redirect by shifting the tone from a suspense thriller to some weird buddy comedy, which leads me to the next massive problem: the script.
The script is terrible and the plot literally makes no sense at times. The whole movie opens up with Eddie Brock being this Michael Moore-esque conspiracy journalist with his own show, and yet the news agency he's working for picks him to do a puff piece for the CEO and founder of a massive pharmacuitical company called The Life Foundation that has also been pushing research into Space. He then blows up the whole interview by asking the CEO questions about information he only obtained through logging into his fiancee's email. NONE OF THAT MAKES ANY SENSE! I mentioned in a previous piece that interviewing a CEO is a HEAVILY vetted process, the moment they said a guy like Brock was who they were sending, the CEO would have been like: howabout no. In addition, no executive at a media agency would send a reporter like Brock to that interview, especially not when it's common knowledge that he's a loose cannon and it got him burned in New York. Their is no ammount of suspended disbelief that can redeem this many plot holes in JUST THE OPENING 30 MINUTES OF THE MOVIE! However, the greatest plot hole lies in the film's rendition of the character's origin.
You see, the first act and even part of the second act sets Eddie up to be this really good guy that, while invested in taking down bad people through journalism, would honestly never hurt a damn fly. This becomes a massive problem when he seems to have little to no qualms at all when he turns into an 8 ft tall monster with a tendancy of biting people's heads off. This major problem can all be traced back to the biggest piece missing from this film: Spider-Man. This origin feels forced and hollow because without the element of Spider-Man, why does Eddie compromise his morality to be so brutal and murder.
See in the books Venom is a VILLAIN largely of Spidey's own making. The symbiote was brought back to Earth by Peter after a major crossover event called Secret War. He wore that symbiote as a suit for quite some time as it negated his need for web fluid and seemed to amplify his strength, speed, and reflexes even further. Not to mention that the symbiote could just morph into whatever Peter wanted to wear. He did this until he found out that the suit was taking his body out for joy rides at night until Peter needed to sleep all day to recouperate. Peter eventually catches on and separates from the symbiote, rejecting it. To a symbiote a host is not just that, but it's a partner. Their bond is similar to that of a marriage and they even asexually reproduce of that bond. This was a deep wound for the symbiote, but it wouldn't be long before the symbiote would find a new host in Eddie Brock. Now just like in the movie, Eddie is a disgraced journalist. However, Eddie blames Spider-Man for his fall from grace. Depression from losing his job that he loved sent Eddie into a downward spiral. He tried to fill the void left by his lack of work with weight lifting and other similar activities, forging his body into peak condition, however, nothing seemed to do, until he found the symbiote. They discovered in eachother a bond of hatred for Spider-Man. With the symbiote's intimate knowledge of Spider-man, they became a perversion of everything Spider-Man was, down to his very look. Together they became Venom.
Sadly, this film provides us with nothing so deep as that. It's just: the symbiote does his thing, Eddie mildly complains for like 2 minutes about it, and then the symbiote just goes: BECAUSE I SAID SO! To which Eddie replies with the spinal fortitude of a bowl of jellow: okay. Sadly this is a running trope throughout the movie, that Eddie is a little bitch and the suit knows it. While it certainly gets a laugh or two here or there, I can tell you one thing it certainly is not: Venom.
I think the biggest tragedy is that even a star studded cast couldn't save this film. Ultimately this film was doomed the moment that Sony wiffed the returns from Spider-Man: Homecoming because ultimately Sony doesn't care about making a good Venom movie. Everything about this film since it started production has said that: they pushed the film to be made in just over a year, no presence of Spider-Man, dropped to a PG-13 rating. They knew what was going to be delivered was going to be a sub parr piece of garbage, but that it didn't matter. Fans were going to pay gangbusters to see this film, and whats sad is that they were right. Not only does this piece of shit movie have a 89 percent user rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a B+ CinemaScore, but it has made 20, million over the projected 60 million opening weekend box office numbers. To fans of Spider-Man, I am sorry to say it looks like Sony is going to get their chance to ruin more characters afterall, and the people like Kraven the Hunter, and Black Cat, people you have hoped to see in live action Spider-Man movies, will all be ruined on the big screen in the same way before they even have a chance to interact with the wallcrawler in live action. I would rate this movie 5.5/10, it's certainly got a little charm making it better than what most critics are saying, but it's not by a whole hell of a lot.
This has been another edition of Comic Relief! I hope you have enjoyed and we look forward to seeing you again soon!
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