Venom (2018)

(SPOILER WARNING!!)

I'm gonna start this off by the giving the film the faintest form of praise; any, and I do mean ANY, other depiction of this character is better than what was seen in "Spider-Man 3".

After the, shall we say, heated reactions to the film from fans, especially with it's bastardised depiction of the character of Eddie Brock/Venom, it became clear that Avi Arad, the producer most responsible for forcing the character into the story, could not be trusted to helm any project regarding everyone's favourite red and blue web-head. His, and Sony's, mandates and revisions are ultimately what lead to the film being he worst of any Spider-Man movie as hardly any of it was actually Sam Raimi's vision, especially as Raimi didn't want Venom in the film due to hating the character.

Thus when I had heard that Arad assigned himself as the producer for a future spin-off film, I was pissed! This idiot was more concerned with just holding on to the rights to the character and wanting to bank off of having him in his own movie, despite the fact that he apparently wanted to do it without Spider-Man involved. Even when actual talent was brought on to the film, namely the main star Tom Hardy and director Ruben Fleischer of "Zombieland", I had very little hope that this film would succeed. And initially, that seems to be the case, with a current 31% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and most critics giving the film slanderous reviews.

And yes, I'm aware of the whole ""A Star is Born" fans writing fake reviews on "Venom"" fiasco. It's honestly on par with the "Disney paid critics to hate "Suicide Squad"" thing on how ridiculously stupid it is.

But with that said, likely due to my lowered expectations, I actually ended up having a fun time with this film. Now, does that make it good?




But I honestly think that the critics are over reacting with this one.

Anyways, plot synopsis; Tom Hardy plays our protagonist Eddie Brock, an investigative reporter who uncovers conspiracies for his news station, and is happily engaged to attorney Anne Weying (played by Michelle Williams). That is until one day, he is given the task to interview Life Foundation CEO Carlton Drake (played by Riz Ahmed) concerning the companies expanses to space travel. However, Eddie steers the conversation to claims of illegal human experimentation on the homeless which ends up getting both him and Anne fired from their jobs, breaking off the engagement.

Cut to 6 months later, and Eddie is on his last rope when he is approached by Dr Dora Skirth (played by Jenny Slate), who warns Eddie that the rumours were true; Drake has been using the homeless in a series of tests to perfect symbiosis between humans and alien creatures that have been brought back on the Life Foundation's latest space exploration. Eddie investigates, only to get infected with one of the three remaining creatures, nicknamed symbiotes. This symbiote, calling itself Venom, bonds with Eddie in order to savour it's hunger for flesh, and Eddie has to find a way to balance that, as well as stop whatever bullshit plan Drake wants to pull with the symbiotes.

When you get down to it, the plot is fairly straight forward. Which, really, is part of the problem.

With this essentially being the kickstart to a new series of Sony movies with what little Marvel properties they have left, you'd expect them to do something more that what was already seen in not 1, not 2, but all 3 "Iron Man" movies! This is almost note for note the same plan we got from the likes of Obadiah Stane, or Justin Hammer, or Aldrich Killian; a random asshole in a business suit with little to no charisma who wants money, or to take over the world, or... actually, what DOES Drake want?

At least with the "Iron Man" villains, I know what they want; the first two want money and Tony out of the picture, whereas the third wants revenge and to spread fear and chaos. Carlton Drake? He has no real end goal, and thus is a pathetic villain on par with the likes of Malekith from "Thor: The Dark World" and Ronan the Accuser from "Guardians of the Galaxy". As such, we ultimately don't feel threatened when he eventually bonds with the symbiotes leader, Riot, to go back into space. To summarise; shit villains.

Which is a shame, as I feel that the rest of the cast gave legitimately good performances, even with the film having some pretty shitty dialogue at points. And this is especially true for Tom Hardy, who I felt was the perfect casting choice for Eddie Brock. I certainly see more of Eddie's character in Hardy's portrayal than what we got from Topher Grace's. For one, he and the symbiote have a great dynamic between the two, their interactions really helping to the sell the dialogue that, were it anyone else, wouldn't have worked as well as it does. That's not to say that it's PERFECT, mind you;



Who the fuck talks like that?!

But I honestly do enjoy watching Eddie and the symbiote interact, thus making it the best part of the movie.

Also, I don't care what anyone else says; Venom looks fucking awesome in this film. Even with the absence of the spider logo, he still looks like he jumped right off of the panel and into live action.

Sadly, the same can't be said for the rest of the cast, as despite giving good performances (bar Riz Ahmed practically sleepwalking through the scripts), none of the side characters ever feel important or have any real chemistry with Eddie. Some of this may be because of dialogue, or maybe it was in the 40 minutes of the film that was cut before release, but this film really could of used more interaction between the cast to help make the characters feel real.

Even the action, despite it being creative in some spots, feels a bit disjointed, namely due to the rapid fire editing that makes it harder to make out what's happening on screen, and Venom and Riot in the final fight have practically identical designs aside from Riot being slightly bulkier. It integrates the CGI fine for what it's worth and there is some impressive choreography that keeps the energy going, but it's otherwise worthless if we can't see most of it due to the close-ups and shotgun editing.

At the end of the day, I can best describe this film like this; it's not bad enough to be offensive to fans of the character, but it also isn't good enough to truly stand out from other mediocre stand-alone superhero films. Had this film NOT had Avi Arad as producer and put in the hands of more competent script writers, it may have had a better shake of things. But as is, the film itself is just a general shoulder shrug. I don't hate it, but it could of been more.

Although there is one thing that I absolutely love about this film; the end credits song by Eminem! Seriously, Eminem's "Venom" is so dumb and doesn't fit the films already confusing tone, but it is fucking amazing! Go on, give it a listen!




Overall rating: 5/10 (Perfectly serviceable).

Next time, we'll finally be doing a top 10 list for this little gig of mine. So until then; this is Callum Lewis, the Media Man, signing off!