Save your money. Don't see Venom



A tag line of the Venom marketing campaign is "The world has enough superheroes", promising that we're going to see something rare: a thrilling origin story of one of Marvel's best comic book villains. Sadly, this film is made by Sony, meaning that another promise has been broken.


Tom Hardy, the only reason your girlfriend wants to see this film, plays Eddie Brock, a reporter who really cares too much about homeless people. Obligatory scary corporation, the Life Foundation, somehow jumps to the conclusion that bringing back parasitic aliens from outer space is the answer to all of the world's problems. These aliens are called symbiotes, colour-varied balls of sentient CGI that need to attach to a living host to survive. Following a stressfully dull 40 minutes of nothing happening, Eddie is bonded with the symbiote, Venom. With a preference for biting people's heads off after oddly licking them, Venom is on a body-sharing adventure with Eddie to stop Obligatory Scary Corporation from doing things that the same suggests, events of which are an absolute tone-deaf mess. 

What does Venom want to be? The answer to that question is the same as defining a bipolar disorder: it abruptly goes from one thing to the other. Action. Comedy. Horror (putting that VERY lightly). Sci-Fi. Thriller. It dips toes into all of these without fully committing to any. The best is the comedy. Basically being bits of a highlight reel from a buddy film between Tom Hardy and a murderous black Flubber (that Hardy also voices), these are the only instances of a good film. Many have taken Hardy's decent performance as their overall review of Venom, as if your living room being tidy makes up for the rest of the house being burnt down. If you were given a tasty piece of bacon besides a dangerously undercooked burger, sandwiched between a mouldy bun, would you eat it all and pay full price? No. You'd send it back to the kitchen and ask the chefs to reevaluate their life choices.


As Tom Hardy's performance as both Eddie Brock and Venom is the only good thing about the film, he may as well have just played every other character, as each one is as badly written as any five year old's first school play. Michelle Williams plays the generic female love interest whose name doesn't matter. This is due to the character and Williams' performance being as significant as a plank of wood, only existing to move the plot along and deliver cringey dialogue. If replaced by a blank mannequin labelled "love interest #29C", the results would be the same. Riz Ahmed as the villainous head of Obligatory Scary Corporation is as equally painful to watch. Unevenly trying to be either a sophisticated yet cunning CEO or a wannabe galactic overlord, all attempts all flat, coming off more as a registered sex offender with a God complex.


Director, Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) had hopes of making a faithful adaption that honors Venom's bloody comic book roots with an R-rating. These were thrwarted by the frustrating influence of Sony executives, forcing a safe and watered down PG-13 version (15 in UK).  Where an R-rated Venom with full creative control could've stood out as well as Deadpool or Logan, the final result is an assortment of actions scenes that haven't been original since 1998. An over-the top motor cycle chase scene left me as bored as the off-screen beheadings with no blood. A room of people supposedly getting cut in half and without a drop of gore in sight is as equally patronizing as it felt tedious.


What was apparently the most "Venom" action scene involved the symbiote fighting a a full SWAT team, which felt more similar to a bear throwing some wet fish around. Following a story scripted with plot holes, the final cut of a film feels more like a hastily written first draft, ending with the tired trope of the powered protagonist having a sloppily-edited CGI fight against the antagonist with similar abilities. It's lazy writing is almost as arrogant as Sony's marketing, once again using a film's final scene in a major trailer.

Final Thoughts

In 2015, after having to reboot Spider-Man twice in eight years, Sony allowed Marvel to step in and collaborate in fixing what they were doing wrong with their comic book films, which was essentially everything. After the new iteration of Spider-Man played by Tom Holland found love and acclaim in Civil War and the 2017 standalone film, Sony decided the Venom film would be soley under their direction. Like the bratty teenager who decides she doesn't need the help of her loving parents, Sony was apparently ready to go at it alone.


A year and a half later, Sony's final product is the chaotic film equivalent of the pretentious teen. She's in rehab, suffering serious malnutrition and has been pregnant several times by different fathers.

Bonus Segment: Ben's Rebuttal

Welcome to Ben's Rebuttal: a segment covering the answers to some of the arguments you may hear when talking about a controversial film!

For Venom, you may hear several points from people saying that the Sony-made feature of shambles is actually worth your money AND time. Those people are wrong.

Take Stacey, your average call centre worker who saw Venom right before going home to catch up on Love Island. Her boyfriend, Gareth, also enjoyed the film, even though it took away from his time playing Fortnite and FIFA:


Stacey: "The film's not as bad as the critics said at all. They're all totally biased!"

Rebuttal: Yes, it's not the flaming animal carcass most critics have made it out to be. As in it's not flaming. It's still an animal carcass of a film. Are you saying you enjoyed watching an animal carcass for an hour and a half? You've got problems, Stacey.



Stacey: "It's just entertainment, ain't it? For some films, you've just got to enjoy it!"

Rebuttal: Cinema tickets are expensive and time is precious. Entertainment is about using high-quality film making to immerse you into a good story. No-one should have to spend over £10 and waste an evening with something so badly done, staying home and watching a Madeline McCann documentary would've been more productive. That's not entertainment. It's a topic for study on what a bland experience looks like.



Stacey: "But TOM HARDY".

Rebuttal: Tom Hardy's great. He was great in this. Though that's only for the approximate 15 minutes or so of decent banter Eddie Brock has with Venom. Give it a few months and a Youtuber will edit together a compilation of the film's buddy comedy moments with an audience laugh track. That's all you'll need. Until then, either rewatch Legend or do a Google image search like your mum occasionally does. The same purpose will be fulfilled.



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