Venom review

VENOM:

A “VENOMOUS” LETDOWN!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** out of 4

COLUMBIA PICTURES AND MARVEL

Tom Hardy is Venom

            Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises, Mad Max: Fury Road, Dunkirk) gets an alien symbiote attached to him and transforms into the powerful Venom in his first movie, directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, 30 Minutes or Less, Gangster Squad) and based on the beloved Marvel Comics character. This isn’t the first time Venom appeared in a live-action movie as the character originally made his cinematic debut in 2007’s Spider-Man 3 and was portrayed by Topher Grace.

            Ever since Spider-Man 3’s release, plans for a Venom movie were already announced and the film went through development hell. There were talks of including the character in the 2012 Amazing Spider-Man universe, but that idea was thrown out the window after The Amazing Spider-Man 2 underperformed in 2014, and Venom appearing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the critical and commercial success of 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming was considered.

            After the collaboration with Marvel on Spider-Man: Homecoming which earned praise from critics, audiences, and fans alike and box-office profits Sony decides to…not reteam with Marvel on this Venom film and go back to their usual shtick. Well, okay then, at least that means we get a hardcore Venom movie that has a body count and a hard R rating, right? Nope, PG-13 because we “might” want to include it in the MCU or maybe we don’t, and we got to get those kids in the movie theaters.

            That’s one of the lousiest reasons to tone down a movie’s rating in my opinion, if the Deadpool movies and Logan are R-rated and part of the X-Men franchise, why couldn’t this earn the same rating and part of the MCU? After all the Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage Netflix shows are pretty heavy but they still take place in the same universe as the Avengers.

            I was still open to the movie and whether it’s good or bad it’s at least sure to have a better understanding of the character than Spider-Man 3. In terms of the character, it’s definitely an improvement over Topher Grace’s awkward performance in Spider-Man 3, but as a movie, it’s an inconsistent mess.

            Unpopular opinion here, I don’t hate this movie, it has some legitimately cool and exciting moments and Tom Hardy is giving it his all. But the movie’s not sure what it’s trying to be, is it trying to be a darker and more mature alternative to the traditional superhero movie genre or is it trying to get the kids into the theater, so the studio can sell toys? It needs to be one or the other because if you try to meet in the middle it becomes unfocused and uninteresting.

            When an alien symbiote crash lands on Earth, journalist Eddie Brock (Hardy) accidentally becomes the host of the symbiote, while attempting to investigate a scandal regarding a mysterious organization and is given a violent alter-ego known as Venom. However, the organization known as the Life Foundation and its CEO, Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed-Nightcrawler, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Night Of), who has discovered three more symbiotes and becomes obsessed with trying to bond them with humans to prepare mankind for the end of the world, is out to get Eddie and extract the missing symbiote.

            Eddie must use his new powers to stop this shadowy organization and save the world from extinction. Oh, and cause some property damage and manslaughter while he’s at it.

            The film also stars Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine, Shutter Island, Manchester by the Sea) as Anne Weying, Scott Haze (Child of God, Midnight Special, Only the Brave) as Roland Treece, Reid Scott (It’s All Relative, My Boys, Veep) as Dr. Dan Lewis, Jenny Slate (Saturday Night Live, Zootopia, The Secret Life of Pets) as Dr. Dora Skirth, and Michelle Lee (Trailer Park of Terror, Resident Evil 6 (video game), Mortal Kombat: Legacy) as Donna Diego.

            Overall, Venom manages to do the character both justice and injustice at the same time, unlike in Spider-Man 3 he isn’t thrown in at the last minute with little screen-time and there are plenty of stand-out moments with Venom kicking ass. But as cool as the Venom scenes are, they’re ruined by the studio playing it safe and gore-free to get a wider audience and a script that could use a rewrite.

            I’m aware the original Venom comics are intended for teen readers, which kind of warmed me up to the film’s PG-13 rating. But when you see him smashing, slicing, and eating people on-screen and there’s no gore, it doesn’t feel as impactful and just makes you wish the movie went full force with an R rating, or at the very least an uncut version for home media.

            Even if the movie went into hard R territory, it wouldn’t excuse its script which in terms of plot is another generic superhero movie origin story. But then you have scenes with Tom Hardy eating food out of the garbage, unnecessary overacting, and delivering some really corny dialogue, as well as the one F-bomb allowed in a PG-13 movie.

            With all that said, there are some things worth praising with Venom, Tom Hardy nails the performance of Eddie Brock/Venom and succeeds where Topher Grace failed in Spider-Man 3. Venom in Spider-Man 3 was a straight-up villain but there wasn’t enough time devoted to him and he was killed off pretty fast, whereas here, he’s closer to the comics as an anti-hero and takes a Jekyll and Hyde approach similar to The Mask the more I think about it, but if Venom started throwing Mr. Hyde’s Psycho-Wave that would have been my cue to walk out.

            I got a kick out of the scenes where Hardy was talking to the Venom symbiote but nobody else could hear him. They both have really funny lines and it’s a clever way to give Venom a personality.

            Had this movie picked a tone and was given a better script, Venom could have been great, but as is it’s just a confused waste of potential. It isn’t one of the worst comic book movies I’ve ever seen, it’s just uneventful, but at least we got a trailer for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse during the credits, I guess that counts as something.