Venom Review
This Friday the next film in the Venom franchise, Venom: Let There Be Carnage hits theaters. So in today’s blog post I wanted to review the first movie in the franchise, Venom which was released in theaters October 2018. So let’s get started!
The Good:
For me the best thing about this movie is the character of Venom. This character has so much personality written about him, and is so much fun to watch on screen. Once the character appears on screen, the movie gets better and it provides some of the best moments of the movie. And I love how he makes fun of Eddie Brock so often and it’s jokes about him being a loser. And later revealed that Venom is kind of a loser also. And the dynamic between Eddie Brock and Venom is great, it provides for some really funny moments. And it is one of the best duos in a rom-com. And tied to that, since Venom is this anti-hero type character it’s a different type of comic book movie. Normally, we track along with a hero for the story. Here Venom is the main character, and seeing this story from the perspective of an anti-hero provides a new type of story.
Another solid thing for this movie is Tom Hardy’s performance as Eddie Brock. Hardy is a great actor and he does have a great acting range. And here he can play all sides of the Eddie Brock character really well. In the first act of the movie, he’s solid as the famous reporter guy. Then once he gets the Symbiote and Venom appears he can play all of the weird aspects that he has to bring to the role. He’s a very versatile actor, and brings his chops to the movie.
This movie also does have plenty of really solid action inside of it. Like I said, Venom is just such a fun character and they let him go wild with the action. You have him biting people’s heads off and destroying agents. It is just a lot of fun to see. And like I mentioned before, since we are seeing this story from the perspective of Venom, the action is from his perspective so it’s just fun seeing Venom doing his thing in the action sequences.
Finally, the movie has two post credit scenes and both of them are very good. The mid-credit scene one teases Woody Harrerlson in the second movie, it just shows that he is great as the character. And the final one is a clip to help promote Spider-Man Into the Spider Verse which when this movie came out, that movie hadn’t yet.
The Bad:
The big thing here is the movie’s tone is all over the place. It starts off as this horror movie then goes to a day in the life of Eddie Brock to a mediocre character study to a buddy comedy when Venom shows up. The movie is trying to be 4 different movies, and they just blended them up and made this movie. What it felt like is Sony had two scripts: a character study about a reporter and then a buddy comedy horror movie with Venom, and they saw these scripts though they both needed something so they combined the scripts and this is what they got. Now I think if this was a rated R buddy comedy with horror elements starting Venom, it could have worked. But the other stuff didn’t.
Also, the movie has several laps in the logic of ways it plays out. For example, early on in the movie we see the symbiote latch onto this old woman that goes from China to San Francisco. Then we cut to things going on with Eddie Brock which leads to a divorce with his wife. Then 6 months went by. And a few scenes later, the woman lands in San Francisco. And so it makes you question, “wait did this woman travel the world then get to San Francisco?” “Did the movie forget about the time jump?” I don’t know what happened, but several things like that happen and I don’t know how it makes sense. If the movie forgot to tighten things up or what happened, it was distracting.
The movie set up this great character arc for the Eddie Brock character, because the inciting incident that causes the divorce is a choice that Eddie makes, and the choice caused his life to crumble. Which could have set up a great character arc for him, but it doesn’t. It felt like they could have removed that plot point from it, figured out another way for Eddie to get into the Life Foundation, and the movie would have been the same. Tied to that, it’s never explained why Eddie did what he did. He said that he doesn’t trust the founder of the organization but it’s never said why he doesn’t trust him.
Honestly besides Venom and Eddie Brock the rest of the characters aren’t very good. The actors aren’t the problem, they did a perfectly fine job. But the writing for those characters are so one note, and they are so forgettable. You have Michelle Williams as the ex-wife, the leading lady of the story, but she’s just the love interest for Venom, who is with another guy. The guy that she is wife, is a stereotypical nice guy that wants to help the lead character. You even have Riz Ahmed as the villain of the movie, who's a good actor. I like it whenever he shows up in things. But the character that he plays is just the evil business that is doing illegal experiments. There is nothing unique or different to give the side character.
Finally, the humor for this movie is pretty uneven. Some of it did make me laugh, especially the stuff with Venom and Eddie. But other moments didn’t work for me. For example, there is this E.T. joke in an elevator between Eddie and a scientist, what it felt like was Tom Hardy was improvising on set and it accidentally made it into the final cut. And the joke just doesn’t work for me, and a few other jokes.
Final Thoughts: While this is a movie that has a whole lot of issues with the tone, storytelling, side characters, and some of the humor. This movie has a lot of entertainment value in it, especially once Venom shows up and you get that relationship between Venom and Eddie forming. So it’s a mediocre comic book movie, but a fun one.
The Score: 6.7/10 (C+)
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