Sony does not have a sterling track record of late when it comes to their superheroes. After the dismal response to 2014’s Amazing Spider-Man 2, Sony reached out to the creative team at the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to better guide their flagship property. A solution was worked out wherein the MCU would essentially make a Spider-Man movie and borrow the character for their own films and Sony would reap the profits, and it worked wonderfully with 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. Now Sony seems to be falling into a similar trap, getting ahead of themselves with an itch to build a larger superhero universe of properties. Venom is a fan favorite Spider-Man villain, so to give the guy his own movie even without Spider-Man is already a risk. The ensuing Venom solo film is a big gooey mess of a movie that needed to decide whether it was going to be scary, funny, goofy, serious, PG-13 or R-rated, or good or bad.
Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is an investigative reporter who has relocated from New York to San Francisco. He’s got a cushy job, a loving fiancé (Michelle Williams), and he loses it all thanks to his ego and drive to uncover the secret experiments of a wealthy Elon Musk-esque business magnate, Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed). Then Eddie discovers the secret of Drake’s lab, an alien symbiotic substance that crashed on Earth. It bonds with Eddie and appears in his head as a guttural voice egging him into bad behavior and the hopeful munching of heads and bodily organs. Eddie must learn to work with his new partner to thwart Drake and another alien symbiote with plans for world domination.
Venom struggles to separate itself from the plethora of superhero films out there and forge an identity of its own, unfortunately without Spider-Man and the larger Marvel world. It’s even in the tagline: “The world has enough superheroes.” If this is the anti-superhero movie it can’t pull that far apart. The set-up was there for something potentially different. Venom could have been the villain instead of merely an anti-hero, with Eddie Brock wrestling with his inner demons in a way that evoked the classic tortured duality of Jekyll and Hyde. I think that approach certainly would have brought out more from director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Gangster Squad). Instead the filmmakers assert that their goo-laden superhero is a bit edgier, a bit looser with the ethics of justifiable homicide when it comes to snacks, and to make it certain they employ a clear-cut villain who has even less compunctions so as to make Venom look better in comparison.
This is a pretty lazy anti-hero archetype that follows the superhero formula to the core. If the Venom symbiosis was presenting problems in Eddie’s life, or presented a lethal force that tempted him to the dark side that needed to be tamed or at least withheld, that would be one thing, but it’s the same-old tool for empowerment. Thanks to the Venom alien, Eddie is able to stand up to bad guys he shrunk from before. Thanks to the Venom alien, Eddie is able to be a better reporter and reactive citizen. Hooray. For a movie that advertised there were too many superheroes, they just flatly rolled out another.
The major problem with Venom is that nobody seems to be on the same page as to what kind of movie they are making. Firstly, Tom Hardy seems to think he’s making his own version of Jim Carrey’s The Mask, hamming it up to great comic effect, stuttering and sloshing his way from scene to scene. This movie would be vastly less interesting if it was not for Hardy and his committed performance of borderline Nicolas Cage-style nuttiness. The film became that much more entertaining once Venom and Eddie were bonded and Hardy had to reconcile the back-and-forth in his head and in public. There are moments that I’m almost convinced the movie is asking its audience to laugh at it and Hardy rather than with it, like when he takes a dip into a lobster tank to cool off. It made me think of All of Me but with an alien parasite. The buddy comedy aspect and interaction was a highlight. The movie is better when it either embraces its goofy elements or at least pretends not to be as serious.
The serious version of this movie seems to infect most of the supporting players, notably Williams and Ahmed. Poor Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea) is another underrated love interest, and in the one scene where she does have agency and power, she immediately gives it back over to Eddie. Ahmed (Rogue One) just looks lost, going from overblown monologue to confusing monologue, making it hard to grasp what his motivations are from scene to scene. Is it space exploration, conquering, or saving the Earth? There’s a part at the end confrontation where Ahmed and Hardy are literally fighting one-on-one and it’s hilariously mismatched. There’s no way a tiny guy like Ahmed would be able to contend with Hardy in a fistfight. That’s the more unbelievable moment yet.
The story has many shortcomings and logical constraints that exist for sloppy stalling purposes. Take for instance the opening scene where a U.S. space shuttle crashes back to Earth and lands in Malaysia (have the people of Malaysia suffered enough downed aircraft?). One of the four alien symbiotes escapes and latches onto an EMT worker, taking control of her body. We then flash forward six months and Drake’s company is testing the symbiotes and having poor results, losing all but one that bonds with Eddie Brock. Why even have four of these things? Why have two to eventually die off-screen when one would do? But really why have any of this setup? The Bad Guy Symbiote is effectively stranded in Malaysia for six months until it figures out that little white girls are the ticket to slipping past airport security guards (and I guess stupid secret lab guards as well). Why not have the breakaway symbiote be the Venom one? Why even have the means of their arrival crash in Malaysia if they’re all just winding up in San Francisco anyway? The only logical answer is the filmmakers wanted the Big Bad sidelined long enough to set up more plot, but it’s so sloppy.
The same can be said about how Eddie eventually ends up face-to-face with his special symbiote. Jenny Slate’s (Gifted) scientist character is to sneak Eddie into the lab, without her supervision of where to specifically go, and for him to… take pictures of the suffering test patients? Why does she need an intermediary to take pictures? Why can’t she do this and then submit them to Eddie? If she fears that the tests are as dangerous, why does she let Eddie stumble around? When the bad guys initially give chase, they use flying drones as their killer weapons. I figured they would use these aerial machines to fire at Eddie as he speeds away on his motorcycle, but no, instead they use them as kamikaze bombs. How is that effective? Why do the good people of San Francisco seem to shrug at a series of bombs going off around their city? This is pretty much the definition of modern terrorism. How about when the Venom symbiote goo is separated from Eddie and he’s taken away, and the symbiote has to escape from a hospital and it has a choice of small dog or human being as its escape vehicle… and it chooses the small yappy dog. The movie is littered with these kinds of head-scratchers and leaves the overwhelming impression that much of this story and ensuing production was thrown together in the most haphazard fashion.
The action and special effects are also pretty messy and lackluster. The Venom alien goop just looks like Hardy is constantly dripping black paint. The effects do not look drastically improved from when we first caught glimpse of a big screen Venom in 2007’s Spider-Man 3 (though no candy corn fangs). There’s a lengthy attack sequence between Venom and an entire squad of SWAT officers that takes place in the haze of a teargas cloud. It’s meant to evoke a sense of horror as Venom pops up randomly, except it just makes everything too chaotic to maintain interest. Too many sequences take place at night to obfuscate the special effects work. The final act is the worst part, as Venom faces down another symbiotic goo-monster, and it ends up being a clash between a black-skinned goo monster and a grey-skinned goo monster outdoors at night with quick camera edits. Good luck trying to comprehend what is happening on the screen. It’s such a bleh villain as well, just a bigger, slightly more evil version of Venom, and its world-dominating plan involve bringing the other symbiotes to Earth, which will take, by my calculations, at least a few decades, at best, of space travel time. It’s one last noisy, dumb moment in a movie filled with loud and dumb moments to pass the time.
I still can’t find a straight answer whether Venom was initially filmed as a PG-13 film or as an R-rated movie and re-edited into a safer, more commercial PG-13 form. In its current incarnation, I don’t think an R-rating would have added much more to it, but that’s because the film doesn’t feel like it was conceived as an R-rated property. That’s a shame considering it features an alien creature that eats people’s heads. There is one scene where Venom eats a mugger’s head and the next scene he reverts back to Eddie Brock, and we see Eddie leave the shop in clear sight. The dead body of his headless victim is curiously missing even though it should be in full view. What happened? Also, what happens to the shop owner who is now witness to this traumatic event? Are the police or insurance agents going to believe her tale about an alien monster biting the head off a man whose body was left in her business? Is anyone going to want to shop there again once word spreads that a guy had his head removed? The Venom movie we get doesn’t earn this scene and it doesn’t get to wave away the scrutiny it invites.
Venom is a mediocre superhero movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It says it doesn’t want to be a superhero film, but it falls under the same plot trappings. It seems like it’s a silly comedy, but then it asks you to take it seriously. It seems like a serious action thriller, but then it has a goo-covered anti-hero say, without a hint of irony, that it’s “time to save the world.” Then there’s the painfully on-the-nose post-credits scene meant to bait the audience into interest in future sequels (stop doing this, Hollywood). This is a sloppy movie on all levels. The saving grace is Hardy’s dedicated, ridiculous, tic-heavy performance, which at least smoothed over the rough patches at various points for my enjoyment. Otherwise, the best part of the Venom movie is a three-minute clip for the animated Spider-Man movie Sony is scheduled to release in December. Those delightful three minutes are better than anything else Venom has to offer in its slapdash, goo-filled tonal mishmash. Check out the underrated genre gem Upgrade instead, the superior Venom.
Nate’s Grade: C-
This review originally ran on Nate’s own review site Nathanzoebl. Check it out for hundreds of excellent reviews!