‘Venom’ proves Sony needs Marvel’s help because even Tom Hardy can’t save the film
Imagine if Sony announced the Venom film before Tom Holland was cast as Spider-Man, adding that Spidey wouldn’t be in the film – not even mentioned. Hold that thought and ask yourself if that’s the best move?
The answer is a resounding NO.
After years and years of rumors as the studio mishandles their Spiderverse, Venom finally arrived and fans will undoubtedly be let down.
Hardy plays Eddie Brock, an investigative journalist who violates the trust of his fiance (Michelle Williams) to get some dirt on one of her clients, uber billionaire Carlton Drake, played by Riz Ahmed (Nightcrawler, Rogue One), and ultimately “loses everything.” Drake has a belief that the humans are destroying the Earth (we’re evil, global warming and all that), so he’s using space flight to explore other planets for habitation and brought back the symbiotes.
Of course, the symbiote finds its way to Brock and becomes Venom.
So why is Venom an anti-hero?
The creature needs to feed on fresh meat to survive, so Brock attempts to control the creature inside of him with compromise and ultimately that involves stop Drake, who gets infected with the biggest and baddest symbiote, Riot.
Director Ruben Fleischer (Gangster Squad, Zombieland) delivers a disaster of a film.
The setup of Brock is too long resulting in an extremely boring first half of the film. Venom’s need to “feed” on meat isn’t clear at first and seems a bizarre motivation to just kill the “bad guys,” not the good ones (as Eddie determines). Ahmed is just unbearable as the callous, evil corporate genius. Unlike his other great performances, Drake is never maniacal or insane enough to be a real threat in the film.
By the time the symbiote action gets moving, fans have to endure the Venon infected dog, bad jokes and nothing interesting. Hardy saves the film from being a complete disaster, pulling off Brock as a schizophrenic hearing voices in his head and the comedic element to make this a bit “Buddy Cop.”
The climax is anticlimactic as Eddie is then seen in the store scene from the trailers (the woman being robbed and Venom…well you know the rest) and that’s that folks.
Sony has a horrible track record of handling Spider-Man films, so it’s no surprise they messed this up so badly. As Sony does with most of their films, much of Venom is ruined in the teasers and trailers, so if you’ve seen the footage, add that let down to counterbalance the film’s positive moments.
None of the cast is worth keeping for a sequel and yes, they set that up in the mid-credits scene. It’s actually hard to blame the cast when the script was so bad and it’s hard to blame the writers when the direction was so bad.
Did I mention Tom Hardy was great?
It was worth repeating.
Venom has fun moments and is the “bad movie” that many will love. Sadly, Sony’s bad filmmaking is being rewarded with a big box office opening.
Venom gets 2 stars out of 5 stars
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