Venom (2018) - Review
Originally published May, 2019Last year I mentioned how I witnessed the trailer for Venom, starring Tom Hardy, and felt next to no excitement for it in my The Symptoms of Fandom Abandom article. The reason this was significant for me was because, when I was a kid, Venom was one of my favorite comic book characters: I was a big fan of Spider-Man and an even bigger fan of Venom. If you have seen Spider-Man 3 from 2008, you can probably guess I was not pleased with how Sam Raimi Sony handled both of those characters. At the time, I still sort of cared about comic-book heroes in movies. A decade later, I've since moved on in favor of attempting to appreciate a film without letting the source material affect my opinion too much. So, how does that affect my take on this new Venom movie?
I'd say it comes out in Venom's favor. The origin story of the monstrous anti-hero in this film is mostly taken out of the Spider-Man animated series from the 1990's, with one really BIG caveat: there's no Spider-Man. This is a bit weird because the whole thing about Venom—besides the fact that his name comes from a spider's main weapon—is that he's supposed to be the anti-Spider-Man. He's supposed to be bigger, stronger, better, and more dangerous with all the same abilities but amplified. He’s more of a villain, but he has a ravenous and sociopathic version of "justice" that tilts the scale a bit.
That's not really the case here. Instead, it just focuses on the idea of Venom's origin story as though Spider-Man has nothing to do with it, with no real abilities tied to the wallcrawler. If you can't live with the fact they've made these sort of changes for the sake of a standalone movie about this character (to retain the rights to Spider-Man), you probably won't like Venom. In the film's defense, however, just keep in mind that it wouldn't be the first time the origin story for this character has changed over the years.
Pros
Tom Hardy
Some of the choreography of the action sequences is pretty good
Aside from the lame secret scene at the end of the film, it's not trying too hard to have fan service
Villain is entertainingly over-the-top
Banter between Venom and Eddie Brock is somewhat entertaining
Cons
Tom Hardy
Most action sequences take place at night and are not easy to follow
Lots of plot conveniences and suspension of disbelief
Cliché as all hell
Common origin story issues around the main plot
Comedic scenes are hit and miss (mostly miss)
Plot & Thoughts
A private space shuttle is returning to Earth from a mission, but something goes wrong in its descent and it crash lands somewhere in Malaysia. The San Francisco-based company, Life, which was responsible for the mission sends a crew to recover the ever-important cargo, and maybe see if there were any survivors. What was the cargo? Aliens that look like something mixed between motor oil and salt-water taffy, called symbiotes. These creatures can only survive in our atmosphere for a certain amount of time without becoming attached to a host. One goes missing immediately, while the others are carted off to the Life lab, wherein one will come in contact with our protagonist, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) at some point.
Eddie Brock, at the start of the film, is a successful journalist who knows how to journalism real good. That sentence is intentionally stupid because one of my main criticisms of Venom is in how typical the characterization is for the film and how it just cuts corners for the sake of time. There's a short montage of Brock with his own news show on a network, showing how successful he is, along with the ever familiar "waking up in the morning" scene with him and his fiancé, Anne (Michelle Williams), to show how they're in a terrific and loving relationship. Everything is going great for him right now, so you know that has to change right away for really dumb reasons.
Not even Eddie Brock knows why, but his boss selects Brock to interview the Life CEO, Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed): a guy who is exceptionally good at pretending to care about people. Brock has his suspicions, and it doesn't take long for the film to confirm them by showing how Drake is such an evilly evil Silicon Valley CEO, only interested in achieving his goals, regardless of the human cost. The film spends a lot of time making sure we dislike this antagonist throughout the whole movie, as though our opinion might change at any point. Even though Brock is very upfront about his suspicions, and even though the movie spent some time showing us that he's the only journalist out there with enough integrity to actually put his career on the line to ask hard questions that could get him fired—though, the film shows us later that he lacks fundamental journalism skills like using a citable source to back up his story—his boss still asks him to interview Drake.
We know how this goes. Brock can't help but do the "right thing" at the cost of his career and then also his fiancé's career I guess, for which she very quickly kicks him to the curb. Realistically, if they were in such a loving relationship, this one big screw-up may still be the reason for their loving relationship to end, but it would bring on a long break up process with many fights instead of just the single, familiar scene of her giving back the ring. It's fine, it's a superhero movie. No logic is required when it's trying to set up the events of the film as quickly as possible.
Skip ahead, Brock is a loser with a shitty apartment, no job, and still pining after his ex who has since moved on to a successful surgeon. Brock's life is going nowhere till he's given a strong lead against the Life CEO and in the process ends up breaking into the Life HQ. Despite being the premiere science company, its security is rather weak and must not have any internal security cameras for some reason, because Brock very easily gets through to the top-secret labs, and gets hooked up with Venom by accident.
Let's not go any further and just focus on this particular scene for a moment. This is supposed to be a significant event for multiple reasons. For one thing, it's when the 'hero' of Venom is basically born. More specifically, however, the film spends a lot of time focusing on the fact that the symbiotes need a specific host in order for both the host and the alien to survive—they even use a blood-type analogy. If not compatible, the symbiote eats away at the host over time and then only one of them remains. Eddie Brock and Venom's union, however, is the first successful one and the results astonish the researchers. Yet, after this point, there are multiple examples of how a host doesn't suffer much consequence. This along with a few other conveniences, like a random person's ability to infiltrate a guarded facility that has a space launch pad somewhere in the SF Bay (which does not make sense from a logical, scientific, or geographical standpoint), are littered throughout the film. These are lazy, easy, arbitrary conveniences to move the plot along with minimal effort.
It's an origin story and it sets up for a sequel, as you would expect of any superhero movie. If you've seen one origin story, you know how it often has various pitfalls and Venom is no different. A lot of time is spent building up to the point in which Brock gets his powers. Then, some time is spent with him dealing with the new abilities and figuring out the situation, before he finally accepts his new role and confronts the villain. Venom sticks to clichés to get the job done and move the plot along, but it doesn't really have an existential threat show up in the plot until the last 30 minutes. The flow of the film is similar to that of the first Iron Man, in a very specific and generous sense.
Despite all these flaws—of which there are many—I still didn't mind the movie that much. I don't think it's good, but I also don't consider it unwatchable. It's entertaining enough, and there was some effort in certain areas of the film. Tom Hardy is always trying his best, which usually involves some new accent of his. I don't really know about his Bobcat Goldwaith version of Eddie Brock, but whatever, I guess. He's a compelling enough actor that you can get used to it and just go along with the nonsense of the movie. Even the schizophrenic side of his performance somewhat makes up for it, and the banter between him and the symbiote is somewhat entertaining.
What's disappointing is that, for a superhero movie, so much of the movie's action is fast-moving and somewhat poorly shot in environments that are usually not very well lit. Venom is mostly a nocturnal character, but the film would have benefited from more action sequences taking place in the daytime or in a well-lit area. Maybe the digital effects budget was low and they wanted to hide the ugly bits, but I can't say that much of the action was compelling outside of the first scene where Eddie is discovering his new abilities.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Venom is missing a lot of features and details that someone who is familiar with the comic book character will definitely notice. However, as a standalone movie, it's fine. It's not good, but it's not terrible. It's just a pretty middling experience that you might even enjoy if you ignore all the tropes and clichés of a typical origin story, or forget about all the things that made the character popular enough to warrant a movie about him in the first place.
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