Venom

A TURD IN THE WIND

Oh Sony, when will you learn?

Venom is the first instalment in Sony's Marvel universe, supposedly concurrent with Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe despite not mentioning a certain red spandex-clad web slinger once in the entire movie (post-credits included).

The last time we saw a big screen version of Venom, the symbiote was played by Topher Grace in the pretty awful Spider-Man 3 (2007).

Two reboots of the Spider-Man franchise later and here we are, with Eddie Brock/Venom now played by the absolutely brilliant Tom Hardy.

Let's start off with the positives, and perhaps the movie's brightest shining light lies within every interaction Hardy has with his slimy alter-ego.

He is fantastic in those scenes, seriously displaying his considerable acting chops as he practically talks to himself and behaves erratically.

I also really liked how they gave Venom a personality, which, on top of the very entertaining interactions with Eddie, also made for some excellent comedic moments, ultimately striking a nice balance between action and comedy.

The CGI for the fully-formed Venom looked really dodgy in the trailers but they really polished the effects up for the final product. The detail on the symbiote, its slimy body and even the smallest of details like the texture of its sharp teeth were excellent.

Tom Hardy's vocal performance for Venom's voice was also great. Similar to what they did for his voice for Bane in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), they added many effects to make his voice more menacing and foreign, and yet the performance and timing of lines all shine through.

If only Britney Spears could give more character to her autotune.

Unfortunately, that's basically where all the positives end.

For one, the first half of the movie is a complete and utter snooze fest. Okay fair enough, they were trying to flesh out the main characters plus Eddie's story with his love interest Anne (Michelle Williams), but they could've at least told the story with some kind of interest.

What we end up getting is an even-worse-than-formulaic mock up of every dramatic moment in any other sitcom, edited together by a monkey, starring Tom Hardy and Michelle Williams.

As good as they are as actors, nothing could save the trainwreck of a first half. I recall having my palm on my forehead wondering if the movie could get any worse.

Mercifully, once Venom comes into play, the movie becomes 100% better - which made me wonder if removing around 60% of the first half would've made a better movie overall considering how nobody seemed to care at all about the love story and other character intros.

I felt that the studio interference was very evident in this movie. It felt as thought there’s at least 30 minutes of exposition and character development that ended up on the cutting room floor.

As it turns out, there was. Tom Hardy himself has said that 40 minutes of the movie (apparently all his favourite bits) were all snipped away. As someone who loves movies and who appreciates a director's vision of a story, I just hate it whenever the big bullies step in and decide what's best for the sake of more monetary gain instead of ensuring top quality of the product.

Such is the nature of the business.

To a degree, however, the trims do work at times due to many of the expository scenes being extremely dry and pointless. However, too many cuts were made which left the first half of the movie in an absolute mess in terms of pacing and continuity.

On top of that, it also leaves the movie feeling as if it was initially intended as a violent and gory Deadpool/Logan-type R-rated movie, with its action scenes chopped down drastically at the last minute by the studio to achieve a PG-13 rating to cater to a broader audience.

I also think that's the reason why pretty much all of the action scenes occur at night and in the dark, edited to be even darker-lit to hide whatever body part was flying around.

Which leads me to another major flaw - how darkly-lit those scenes are. It's ridiculous to expect audiences to be able to see what's going on. On the director (Ruben Fleischer) and cinematographer's part, what on earth were they thinking? Did they forget they had shades on when filming the movie?

As for the cast, Michelle Williams, as talented as she is, unfortunately has zero chemistry with Tom Hardy, although it isn't down to acting chops. The former plays a character so two-dimensional, literally any average actress could’ve played her. I like Williams as an actress and I feel she was just miscast in the role.

Perhaps they could've recalled Bryce Dallas Howard to just scream her lungs out for 120 minutes again.

And now we come to the movie's main antagonist.

As the saying goes, "the movie is only as good as its villain", and thus this villain is so incredibly forgettable.

Riz Ahmed plays Carlton Drake, some businessman who owns some evil company that isn't named Oscorp, and the character is the most stereotypical “evil businessman”-type villain ever. It’s such a dull role, and one he plays with such little conviction, as if he himself didn't see eye-to-eye with the motives of the character he was playing.

That pretty much sums up all the negatives of the movie. I don't wish to go into detail on a dodgy script or confused direction because I feel too much of the film was cut to jump to that conclusion.

All in all, Venom had all the tools and all the potential in the world to be a solid spinoff and successful reboot of the character, with the biggest "tool" of all being the casting of Tom Hardy as your main man. That's like being handed a blank cheque only for yourself to drop it in a puddle of mud.

Once again for Sony, it's potential painfully squandered.

There were signs of some very good ideas and directions which could be explored more in future instalments, and for that reason, plus some assurance that the studio wouldn't interfere as much next time (unlikely), I remain optimistic. Imagine if they introduce Tom Holland's Spider-Man into this universe. Now that is something Sony MUST NOT screw up.

Would I recommend seeing it? Well, what I'd do as someone who likes good movies is to spend my money on a ticket to A Star is Born instead. My review of that is coming real soon.

4/10.