Venom is a 2018 comic book origin story about Spider-Man’s most famous villain.
The last time we saw Venom on the big screen, it was Spider-Man 3. He didn’t get quite the story that we wanted. So now we have a full movie dedicated to one of the most iconic bad guys in comic book lore. This version is very different from the Marvel comic series that I and many others are used to. In the original comic series, Spider-Man finds this alien parasite that turns his suit black and gives him extra powers. It also takes control and turns him into a bad guy. So, when he rids himself of the creature, it finds a new host in Eddie Brock. An egotistical reporter who blames Peter Parker for getting him fired. Their combined hated for both the webcrawler and the shy photographer added a lot of great depth to that character.
In this new story, Eddie (Tom Hardy) is a bad guy with the heart of gold. He works as a reporter doing exposes on criminals in his new home of San Francisco. After he blames a rich tycoon (Riz Ahmed) of doing illegal things in an interview, he is fired from his post and his girlfriend Anne (Michelle Williams) dumps him right afterwards. Meanwhile, there is this crew who collected alien samples for the same rich tycoon guy who was actually evil this whole time. I am shocked. He is trying to combine these alien creatures with humans to make us better I guess. How did he know that these beings would mesh well with any mammal? Did he just somehow know that they would they would fit fine within someone else’s body. I don’t know. When Eddie gets a tip from a former co worker (Jenny Slate) about the evil rich tycoon, he goes to the lab and gets infected and now has the alien within him. From there, he must try to make friends with his new parasite, stop the bad guy, and maybe win back his girl.
Venom is one part The Thing mixed with Invasion of The Body Snatchers meets Species. Eddie Brock’s relationship with the parasite is a lot like Deadpool in the comics when he talked to himself, just far less funny. Director Ruben Fleischer, who had a huge hit with Zombieland, just makes a very average and rather dull comic book movie. Now I’m not sure if this had anything to do with the studio’s insistence on making this PG-13 or not, but they missed out completely on what Venom is all about. When inside a host, the alien gives you the feeling that you are unstoppable and that everyone is unworthy. That just doesn’t resonant here.
The only relationship we have moving us forward is with the creature and no one else. So when I saw that Eddie and the Symbiote were actually bonding in some scenes, I felt put off because it seems like the writers didn’t even read any comics featuring Venom. Later, the creature tries to help Eddie win his girlfriend back that was both confusing and frustrating. At times I felt like I was watching a bad remake of Lethal Weapon with Eddie as Murtaugh and Venom as Riggs. As for the action it was kind of weak. Fights are either close up or at medium frame. So, it’s tough to really see who hit whom. Not to mention that the majority of it is in the dark, but I’m sure they did that on purpose to tone down any blood. Sound effects are all cliches you’ve heard in countless other action films including (believe it not) the famous Wilhelm scream. Hardy is fine in the role but really anyone could have played this character. The rest of the cast were fine but they really given nothing to add to their characters. The only person in this movie who was of any interest was Melora Walters, who has a small role as a homeless women. That said, I enjoyed the cameo after the first set of credits at the end. That made me excited for a possible sequel, which I’m sure I will watch before sitting through this again.