Venom Review

It is Wednesday, so it is my rant and raves day where I just talk about pop culture and things that just set me off a bit so I can get through the week. This week, I am coming back to a topic that I covered before, so I think that it calls for a follow-up. What we are covering this week is the movie Venom. He is a link to what I thought before after the trailer, and we will see how they compare to now after I watched the movie opening day.

Source

Are we Venom?

The Good

I was right; Tom Hardy can play the Eddie Brock character as well as Tom Holland can play Spidey. He can be serious at the time, can portray anger and hopelessness like I would expect Eddie to be. There are points where he accepts the symbiote, which is what I want Eddie to do. He works with the symbiote to be one together in achieving their goals (kill Spiderman, wait that is later).

There are also points where he questions the symbiote's motives, which I have no quarl with. This adds up to some amusing banter between Eddie and Brock that added some humor to the darker nature of the film, giving it a little depth. Hoping to see more of this in the next movie. On that note, this movie's stumbles can be mostly forgiven for the sequel coming up including Carnage. It is understandable to leave Carnage for a sequel because it would have made this film more of a mess, which let's get into that part...

The Bad

The story is more or less hot garbage compared to the rest of the Marvel films. That cannot be denied; it is a reminder to early 2000's hero films, introduce hero, introduce villain and problem, give the hero powers, the big fight at the end everyone lives. It had nothing exciting to offer storywise, which is disappointing for a complex character like Venom. Is it as bad as Suicide Squad? No, that is still worse. Was it more like Thor or Ironman first phase movie, kinda.

No Spiderman, I went in expecting not to see the web-slinger, but other things about Sony movies makes this more of a mess now. I thought they legally couldn't mention him because of his inclusion into their MCU, but they can refer to a Spiderman. So, how did Venom get his powers? It is shown that he has web-slinging powers and spider-sense! That is the biggest power problem I have because Venom does not have that power, he cancels Spiderman's spider-sense, making him virtually invisible to him. They said that Eddie is from NY, they could have said this is the same Venom from the Raimi trilogy and just used that as a way of explaining his powers. There is a reason they can do that that I will get into.

Last but certainly not the least, all the other characters aside from Tom Hardys are easily forgettable. That is going back to the story. A generic villain, a generic love interest, generic extra characters. I left not caring about Eddie's relationship or any other role aside from him. When they are trying to build a sony Marvel Universe, building other characters and arcs should be an essential part of building the universe.

The Ugly

Okay, not having Spiderman because of the MCU is one thing, however, Sony is also making the Spider-verse movie. The 161 spiderman canonizes the Raimi movies and the Amazing Spiderman movies. So why couldn't they introduce that Venom into this movie, or a completely different Spiderman just to make his powers make sense?

Then, Venom's motivation for saving the humans is because he is a loser back home? What? Like, I can't believe that is the reason he is working with Eddie. They couldn't find any other reason to state why Venom would work against his kind. That is just lazy writing trying to opt-out for a laugh.

Last, the movie getting changed to a PG-13 rating, in my opinion, killed the movie. They pulled 40 minutes of Venom goodness from the film to put in what, apparently didn't add anything that made the other characters more interesting. Venom should have been R, especially if we are going to put Carnage in the sequel. He is practically made from blood and symbiote; he paints his name in blood from his victims! I just felt let down that they toned down the violence, so it fits into their Canon that already seems to be off to a rocky start.

The End

Was this a 'turd in the wind' as other articles have referred to it as, not precisely. Tom Hardy and Venom was the best parts of this movie. Aside from that, I can't reccommend this film that much. I didn't have many expectations going into watching the movie. I didn't brush up on lore, or predictions for the movie, just my knowledge of the character from reading comic books and other media from when I was a kid. I still left feeling disappointed though. If you don't care about the comic characters, it is a meh movie. If you do, then you will be disappointed and just hoping for a better sequel.

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