This review is an unrestrained spoiler of the Venom movie. Please be aware. I hate spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie and you hate spoilers, do NOT read this review. Fair warning.
So, I just finished watching Venom. And it’s atrocious. I had kind of assumed it would be, but then I made the mistake of talking to people. Most of them thought it was pretty good. Most of them were mostly pleased and said that it wasn’t nearly as bad as they had expected. So I figured what the hell, why not? Yeah, that was a mistake.
My wife and I sat down and turned it on and almost from the beginning it was a rough go. Now, I’m a Spider-Man fan. I own every McFarlane and Larsen issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and I had a fair chunk of the older content back in the day. I’ve read most of the major storylines up through the mid-nineties, and a few of the newer Dan Slott story arcs. Suffice it to say I’m well-versed. My wife is a complete non-geek. No comics, no video games, very little sci-fi and fantasy. In terms of this type of media, we’re polar opposites. I explained the premise behind Venom, and in very basic detail how it diverges from the original source material (by necessity of course). She doesn’t really care, but the intro was pretty tedious. From the initial scene where the symbiote-carrying shuttle crashes but miraculously doesn’t incinerate any of the symbiotes, even the loose one (though they’re wildly vulnerable to fire) to the long and pretentious speeches from East Indian Elon Musk, the painfully pretentious and obvious villain of the piece, it just kind of hurt.
Let me geek out for a moment and say that if you ARE familiar with the source content of Venom’s origins, including the Sin Eater story arc of Amazing Spider-Man and the capture and subsequent escape of the symbiote in ASM #258, 299 and beyond, most of this movie is utterly and painfully predictable. Brock has to have his career destroyed and be at a life-long low. He needs a villain to replace Spider-Man to focus his blame for his fall from grace. These are story musts to keep the character approximately what it is. But they’re done so bluntly in Venom that it’s hard to watch. Even knowing all that, I shouldn’t be able to predict what will happen almost line for line and scene for scene. But I was. And so was my utterly non-geek wife.
In fact, we were bored. The first half of the movie moved so slowly that we could barely stomach it. We stopped even listening to Bad Musk’s rambling expositions entirely. In virtually every scene, either my wife or I called the action or plot development within 5 seconds. Since she primarily watches period dramas and HGTV, that seems like it shouldn’t be possible. We literally stopped watching and started mocking scenes in the movie as well as the acting. I feel bad for Tom Hardy honestly. He didn’t deserve the shade we threw his way. He’s a better actor than this movie deserves, even if he looked so rough in it as to be utterly unappealing in every way.
“Eventually he’ll eat someone’s head, I promise.” Oh, not yet. Oh, still no. Oh, there’s one but just one. Finally. Sure, the car chase through San Francisco was epic…in a way. But it was so painfully ridiculous too that it became boring to watch. Super drones and a million black sedans and not a police car in sight in one of America’s largest cities? Um. Okay. But then the symbiote doesn’t sense the one SUV that hits it after all that? And doesn’t kill the leader of the hit team when they both know he’s the leader? Weak.
Then Venom started talking and things got so much worse. “Oh, I’m part of an army of millions of symbiotes that happened to be flying through the solar system on a comet which a passing spaceship happened to detect and four of us managed to get unwittingly captured by infectable humans and taken back to Earth.” Uh huh. Tell me more, I’m fascinated. *yawn* Seriously, Life had a better plot than that, and after that movie, I wanted to burn down the theater. I honestly felt saddened by the state of cinema about halfway through. I can forgive altering Eddie Brock into an emasculated version of the original character in order to create a story. But not to create an atrocious story that sounds like something a 14 year old would write.
Actually, come to think of it, fourteen year olds have written significantly better things. Look at Eragon for instance (The book, not the movie. Never ever watch the movie!) And this script was loosely based on the Venom: Lethal Protector six issue mini-series written by David Michelinie, along with one other Venom book. At least they had a moderate basis for the plot. But this was even worse than Lethal Protector, a book I bought in 1993, read, and subsequently purged from my collection due to it being pretty damned weak.
Anyway, basically Eddie Brock and Venom were both losers in this movie, one from a comet full of hungry symbiotes surviving in deep space on a comet, one from Frisco. The fact that Venom blatantly states that is both weird and plot-destroying at the same time. “I’m weak and unloved and so are you, so I’m going to turn against my entire species and my nature and save your planet because I feel you, bro.” Wow. Deep stuff. Why do I care what happens to two losers? And speaking of two…
Geek out number two: In the comics, Eddie and Venom are one being. One. Not two. One. Their nervous systems merge and they can’t become separated. I know this changes later on in the chronology of the Marvel Universe, but it’s kind of BS and it drives me nuts that they can separate so easily in this movie. It detracts from the depth and breadth of their relationship and ultimately weakens the character. When Venom says “We” to refer to itself, it makes no sense. It’s not talking about Eddie and itself, nor is it talking about the other symbiotes. It’s only referring to itself in the sense of the royal ‘we’ and that’s just ridiculous. Also, oddly calling itself Venom makes no real sense either. Why? Doesn’t it have an alien name? At this point it’s just fan-service and has no real purpose, much like the painfully Spider-Man-esque design of the character. Even without the logo, it’s a bit obvious.
Okay, reining in. So, watching, the movie, we knew in advance that the female doctor would get fed to a symbiote and die. Yup. We knew Eddie would get infected with a symbiote. Check. We also knew it isn’t the symbiote at the beginning of the movie since the Venom symbiote can’t fire pieces of itself away like that and this movie randomly follows some of the rules of the Marvel Comics Venom’s powers and weaknesses. Check. Did we predict Bad Musk would get infected? Yes. Yes we did. And have a showdown with Eddie? Yup. And the kiss? Yeah, that too. Miss anything? Nope. My wife left about a half hour before the end of the movie because she was so bored she couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t blame her. It was rough. Hell, even the obligatory after-movie Marvel clip was brutal, mostly due to Eddie’s face being absolutely everywhere in San Francisco and then being allowed into a Super Max facility. Oh and because of Woody Harrelson as Cletus Kasady, which makes zero sense considering Harrelson’s age versus the character (though he did manage to be moderately creepy for a few seconds).
Basically, you can’t make a movie more predictable than this. The actors are decent, the effects are decent in general. Venom looks mostly ridiculous, like he’s semi-claymation, and the script is an unsalvageable mess full of hokey half-delivered one liners and weak setups. If you want to see Venom throw a bunch of guys around a room better than it was done in Spider-Man 3, you’ll get what you want. If you want a remotely decent movie that’s honestly enjoyable, good luck. If you want genuinely likeable characters, forget it. The best I can say about it is that I kind of liked the unattached symbiote effects and that it’s a good movie to cut up while you’re watching it. I would definitely watch it again…as an MST3K feature. Seriously, if this is the schlock that sells in movies these days, something is seriously wrong with both the general review apparatus and people in general. Have some self-respect. Don’t watch Venom. This has been a public service announcement.
Please Note: This review has been my personal opinion and not necessarily that of Real Otaku Gamer or its staff, so if you’re going to have a geek meltdown, don’t take it out on them. Thanks!