This was certainly a thing, wasn't it? Venom is a 2018 comic book movie/Sony trying their hardest to make up for Spider-Man 3. I have mixed feelings about it, as do most of the people that saw it, so I'm gonna go in depth about it and give it a proper review. Obviously, this means that several plot points are gonna be spoiled, so here's your official Spoiler Warning now if you haven't seen it yet. Skip this blog until you do, please and thank you. I usually have more to say during this opening bit, but I don't this time for some reason, so let's just get into it.
Let's start off by being positive, since there was a lot about this movie to be admired. Tom Hardy is great as Eddie Brock. The scenes where he's reacting to the Venom symbiote acting on it's own free will are really done well and do a lot to enhance the immersion. Said immersion is then almost immediately crushed by Venom spouting a one-liner, but I'll get to that in a second. Michelle Williams was also pretty good as Anne. She played off of Hardy rather well and turned out to be a really useful character in the story, even joining the final battle briefly. She wasn't just the pointless love interest that you usually see in these movies. I liked her. And the effects are really good, too. Venom looks awesome. His mouth animation is a bit off, but he doesn't have lips so it's excusable. When Venom is on-screen, he looks amazing. And he looks more comic-accurate, being big and bulky (unlike Topher Grace in that other movie). There's this stunning sequence in the third act in which Venom and Riot are fighting, but Eddie and Drake are fighting as well. It's shot in slow-mo, the camera is slowly spinning around it, these two multi-colored blobs are colliding with each other, their hosts are throwing punches. It's breathtaking, probably the best scene in the movie.
This movie was also a lot funnier than I was expecting it to be. The trailers made it seem like it was gonna be this dark, gritty horror movie, but it surprisingly didn't take itself seriously very often. That was honesty very refreshing. A couple moments made me laugh out loud in the theater, which I'm sure pleased the people around me. There was a really funny bit where Brock/Venom are fending off people that are chasing them. Brock's on a motorcycle and the other people are in cars. At one point, Venom flips a couple of the cars in an admittedly very cool-looking stunt. Brock says something along the lines of, "Okay, that was actually pretty cool", but, before he can finish the sentence, he gets plowed by one of the chasing cars. It's another lame jumpscare, but the unexpectedness of it was absolutely hilarious. And, yes, Venom does say way too many one-liners, but about half of them work and are pretty funny. The bit when Eddie first gets the symbiote and meets up with Anne at the bistro was great. At one point, Brock climbs into a lobster tank, which, apparently, was not scripted. Hardy saw the tank and immediately said, 'Well, I am climbing in that tank and there is nothing that can stop me". Knowing that only makes the scene better.
But, as expected, this movie also does have a ton of flaws. Yes, Venom says an ungodly amount of jokes and one-liners. It's a problem. Some of them kill the mood of the scenes their in, some of them break the entire movie's immersion, and some of them just straight-up aren't funny. Venom swearing at Brock for not wanting to jump out a window is funny. Venom flat out saying, "On my planet, I'm kind of a loser" is not. Venom attaching itself to Anne and making out with Brock is both gross and funny, but Venom referencing The Princess Bride at a robber, telling him he's gonna reduce him to a "turd in the wind", and then not going anywhere with it is just gross. For every good joke, there's five bad ones that are gonna come after and ruin it. And most of the actors were awful, too. Jenny Slate's character really did not need to be there. She doesn't do much, she doesn't even have a lot of lines, and she gets killed off halfway through it. Drake, the big villain, when he isn't taking the form of Riot, is a bore to watch. He's set up decently, but, at the end of the day, he wasn't interesting. Riot looked and sounded friggin' amazing, and I wanted to believe that his host earned him. I didn't with Drake. I really wanted to, but I couldn't.
I could predict a lot of the lines, which is never a good thing. One of Drake's employees says, "You can't do this alone" and Drake goes, "I'm not alone." because of course he does. The phrase "have a nice life" is used repeatedly in the span of a minute in one of the first scenes, so naturally that was gonna be the big "haha I thwarted you" line when Venom got the better of Riot. Also, the fact that, in this movie, Venom is shown to be able to heal all of Eddie's wounds completely kills any stakes for the final battle. That motorcycle crash I mentioned earlier? It left Brock with a broken leg, bones protruding out of his fingers, and other gnarly wounds. Venom forms around him and completely fixes everything in seconds. It's unbelievable how much of a walking reset button Venom is. At one point, Brock outright dies. Riot forms a blade with his hands and impales him through the chest with it. He actually dies. But, seconds later, Venom reattaches itself to him and brings him back to life. That by itself took all the fun out of the final battle. I want to fear for his life, but I can't if Venom can fix any wound he gets like it's nothing. I don't know if that's how it is in the comics, but it's really lame either way. And, yes, it is revealed that all symbiotes are slowly killing their hosts and must eventually find new ones. Don't worry, though, that scene and that plotpoint are both never brought up again, which only further adds to the "no stakes" feel that the movie gave me.
It's also said that one of Venom's only two weaknesses is fire. Sound and fire. Well, at the end of the final battle, Venom sacrifices itself to save Eddie's life by blowing up a rocket and then detaching itself from Brock and allowing itself to be engulfed in the flames of the explosion. In the next scene, though, it's fine and continuing to chat with Eddie. It's never explained how it survived, it just kinda did. Again, no stakes. Both of the main heroes die within minutes of each other, but they just get right back up again seconds later as if nothing ever happened. That's not good. But, despite all of that, I am still very glad I saw it. The kills are brutal, getting away with a lot for a PG-13 movie (totally should've been R, by the way). I have no idea what accent Tom was trying to go for, but his acting is still the best part of it. I left the movie before the end-credits scene because I'm a moron, but I do know what happens and I'm really excited to see where this story goes with that.
For all it's rather blatant flaws, I do recommend it. For the most part, it does deliver the Venom we wanted to see in Spider-Man 3. Whether or not Venom 2: Symbiotic Boogaloo happens is up for debate, but, as for the movie we got, it was honestly a lot better than I was expecting it to be. Granted, that isn't saying much, but still. If I had to give it a score, I'd say that Venom is a solid 6. Throw The Harpoon at it, but try to stick it in the shoulder so that it'll have a chance of surviving. I'm only gonna give number ratings to new movies that I see in theaters, and stick with the harpoon bit for older movies. Go see Venom. Or don't. It's up to you.
