Venom Poisoned By Lack Of Spider-Man In Its Diet

When it comes to persistence, there are very few studios who don’t know when to quit like Sony Pictures, and their latest attempt to hold onto the vestiges of the Spider-Man franchise still in their possession shows that in somewhat gruesome fashion. I got a chance to watch Venom and I had moderate to low expectations, I liked Spider-Man 1 & 2, and Amazing Spider-Man 1 was fine. However, at first glance Venom looks like Sony Pictures’ last desperate attempt to stay in the superhero movie game, and while it is that, I still gave it the benefit of the doubt.

Venom stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, the alter ego of the titular character. After a huge bout of hard luck and poor choices he literally binds with an alien life form and gains superpowers.

I kept my synopsis pretty brief, because there isn’t much of a plot here. The first two acts are kinda like, stuff happens and the third act pulls a climax out of its butt.

Narrative is not a strength of this movie, and I blame that primarily on the fact that this is a very loose adaptation of a very recognizable part of the Spider-Man mythos. There is no easy (or sensible) way to tell the story of Venom’s origins without Spider-Man and that fact shows in this flick. It tries to make up for that fact by making nods to side characters, like J. Jonah Jameson’s John, and bringing up the fact that Eddie once worked in New York, but both references just seem forced and will remind certain viewers of how much care Sony actually puts into these things.

The acting was pretty solid given the lack of a coherent story; side characters like Jenny Slate, Scott Haze, Reid Scott and Michelle Williams played their roles very well. Riz Ahmed as Carlton Drake was a lot of fun to watch on screen, as that fun slick talking con man who is kind of evil. But Tom Hardy by and large was the best part of this movie. At this point in his career he is well established as a character actor and the amount of work he put into the roles of both Eddie and the Venom symbiote prove that he is one of the best.

Scenes were shot with very dark lighting because the movie wanted you to think it was dark.

Unfortunately attempts at being dark are drowned out by some surprisingly witty humor — not Cohen Bros. level of witty, but I saw hard-nosed movie critics laugh at some of the jokes.

Music was okay, seeing as how Sony had access to all of Marvel’s assets for this thing an underwhelming score is inevitable.

The CG was clearly where this movie spent its budget, and at that mainly in Venom’s final battle. It looked pretty damn cool and but I will admit when it comes to CGI that I am easily impressed.

Venom wasn’t great — mildly entertaining but a hot mess. There are so many flashes of a better movie in here; I partly blame the downgrade from an “R” to a “PG-13” rating. Watering down a film to make it more accessible is so insulting to any audience and it hurts the final product here.

I say watch it and make up your own mind.

I give Venom (PG-13, Sony, 1 hr, 52 mins) a 2.5 out of 5.