Venom (2018)

Another day, another comicbook movie. When will it end??

So after the somewhat dismal iteration of Venom in 'Spider-Man 3' Sony went back to the drawing board. Initially plans seemed to revolve around having Venom get in on the action in the rebooted 'The Amazing Spider-Man' franchise, but that failed. There were ideas to have Venom kickstart his own franchise which would share the same universe as other Marvel characters. There was also an idea to have Venom in 'Spider-Man: Homecoming'. There was also an idea to have a low budget adult version. Whatever rumours or stories we can all agree that for some reason the powers that be really wanted a Venom movie.

So eventually we got this movie. Whilst on a deep space mission a corporation led by the evil Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) manages to discover a comet covered in symbiotic lifeforms. Bringing four specimens back to Earth one escapes and causes the shuttle to crash which unleashes it. In the meantime Drake starts to experiment on humans, trying to get the aliens to match with a host. The aliens need an oxygen-breathing host to survive.

As you might imagine Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) eventually gets into this corporations HQ (with help from an employee) and is accidentally taken over by one of the symbiotes. We then follow Brock as he adjusts to the alien inside him, Drake and his goons coming after Brock, and eventually the last surviving symbiote taking over Drake resulting in Riot.

Now I'm not up on every Marvel character so I don't know how accurate this movie is to the original source material. I'm guessing there have been many changes. But I do have some large queries. The symbiotes are looking for a planet with hosts they can take over and consume, OK. So what exactly is their plan of action for Earth? Eat every human and...? Then what? Is this all they do?

At the start of the movie we are led to believe that it's hard to find the correct match for the symbiote. Drake is going through loads of human test subjects trying to find a human that will bond with the symbiote. OK that's fine. But at the same time, the symbiote Riot seems to be jumping from human to human no probs at all. Add to that, later on in the movie the symbiote Venom seems to have no problem taking over Brock's ex-girlfriend and a dog. Riot also takes over Drake no problems too. I dunno if I missed something but this just seems inconsistent because we are led to believe that it's hard to find the perfect match for the symbiotes, and when Venom finds Brock it's treated like a shocking breakthrough.

I also found kinda odd that the aliens have names from our human language. I thought (in the comics) Brock came up with the name himself once combined with the symbiote (?). But in this movie the symbiotes seem to already have their names. I also thought Venom changed its mind way too quickly about Earth and humans. The symbiote seems to take the choice of betraying its own very easily purely based on liking Brock. And it had only been combined to Brock for a day or so, maybe not even that! Far too convenient for me.

Aside from that the movie is generally incredibly dated in style and outcome. This really feels like a movie that came out in the 90's. It looks like a movie that came out in the 90's. The CGI ranges from really sweet lookin' to really terrible lookin'. Close-ups of Venom are great, most everything else is bad. Most of the action sequences are woefully bad in both execution and visuals. The stunts are clearly stunts. There are tonnes of obvious greenscreen shots. Venom looks rubbery at times and plastic at others. When Venom fights Riot its an indistinguishable CGI mess. And the bad guys are astronomically cliched. This is the present day 'Spawn'.

Yet despite all that, for some reason, I kinda liked this. I like that they tried to make this somewhat dark and gritty, and for the most part, they succeeded. The start of the movie is quite eerie, playing up some horror tropes. And Hardy definitely helps with his unhinged, dirty, druggie-esque performance. Personally I think they should have gone for broke with an all out R/18 rated flick because the head biting scenes needed to be seen. As they stand its stupid because there's no blood or gore and I'm pretty sure onlookers would be more horrified (the Asian shopkeeper at the end much?).

But yeah, can't quite put my finger on it but I sorta liked this. Kinda reminded me of the trashy mid 90's flicks I'd see at my local Odeon on a Wednesday afternoon. Its not a good movie, its legitimately bad with poor...everything truth be told. Still, in an odd way, this is just...dumb fun.

6/10