The highly anticipated Marvel movie Venom has come into theaters, exciting fans and casual moviegoers alike. In its opening weekend, Venom set a box office record for the month of October, raking in about 80 million dollars.
However, despite all the anticipation and apparent monetary success, Venom is one of the most critically divisive movies to be made. The Rotten Tomatoes score by critics is standing at a poor 30 percent, whilst the movie is being praised by fans at a high percentage of 89. However, what do I think this movie deserves?
Let me get this out of the way first… Venom is an objectively bad movie. Stuff just happens for almost no apparent reason, some of the subplots had no justification for being there, and overall it just feels like it wasn’t finished.
Tom Hardy (the actor who portrays both Eddie Brock and Venom) has even said in an interview that his favorite scenes were cut out, and there was about 30-40 minutes of unused footage that might have set a clearer tone for the movie.
Another issue I have with the movie is it seems very tonally confused. One minute it’s a serious sci-fi action flick, then next it’s a dark comedy with some very goofy moments. Each scene seems disconnected from each other with little to keep it strung tightly together. Overall, the film seems to suffer from a serious case of behaving like a slideshow.
This movie could benefit from an R-rating, there’s literally a scene where Venom bites the head off of someone and a few shots later there is no body to be found. There are a couple plot holes that defy most of the logic the movie has established. Also, the final fight scene was just a goopy mess, I could not distinguish who was who.
Despite all my criticisms of the movie, I enjoyed myself. This is mainly due to Tom Hardy being the perfect Eddie Brock and Venom. He seemed to put all his effort into the characters (even if he did sound like a kid imitating a New Yorker).
One other aspect of the movie I absolutely loved is how the writers wrote Venom’s character. Venom isn’t too edgy of a character. He’s an incredibly nuanced character with a love for human flesh, most of his hosts, and dry humor. They even got the little details down like how he uses chocolate as a substitute for humans (although just briefly mentioned) and how he wants to be a hero at the end of the day, no matter how many bodies he eats.
The introduction of the symbiotes was an excellent showcase of their powers and what they could do, you learn all the basics of their powers right in the first five minutes. Also the number of quick easter eggs would surely please the adamant hunters out there. Both end credit scenes were alright, the first gave us a first look at Woody Harrelson as the host of the Carnage symbiote Cletus Kasady, which is such a perfect casting choice.
The second scene was a sneak peek at the upcoming animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse and it looks absolutely fantastic. Speaking of Spider-Man, this movie does an excellent job without him, it makes it seem like Venom could be his own character dissociated from him.
If I had to give this movie a rating it would be a five or six out of ten. The rating is a bit generous given most of the movie’s glaring issues, but it was really entertaining as an action movie, a sci-fi movie AND a comedy.
If you want to see this film in theaters, be my guest, but I would suggest a more cost-effective choice (especially since I want Sony to relinquish the rights to the Spider-Man villains), just wait for it on a streaming platform.
However, despite all the anticipation and apparent monetary success, Venom is one of the most critically divisive movies to be made. The Rotten Tomatoes score by critics is standing at a poor 30 percent, whilst the movie is being praised by fans at a high percentage of 89. However, what do I think this movie deserves?
Let me get this out of the way first… Venom is an objectively bad movie. Stuff just happens for almost no apparent reason, some of the subplots had no justification for being there, and overall it just feels like it wasn’t finished.
Tom Hardy (the actor who portrays both Eddie Brock and Venom) has even said in an interview that his favorite scenes were cut out, and there was about 30-40 minutes of unused footage that might have set a clearer tone for the movie.
Another issue I have with the movie is it seems very tonally confused. One minute it’s a serious sci-fi action flick, then next it’s a dark comedy with some very goofy moments. Each scene seems disconnected from each other with little to keep it strung tightly together. Overall, the film seems to suffer from a serious case of behaving like a slideshow.
This movie could benefit from an R-rating, there’s literally a scene where Venom bites the head off of someone and a few shots later there is no body to be found. There are a couple plot holes that defy most of the logic the movie has established. Also, the final fight scene was just a goopy mess, I could not distinguish who was who.
Despite all my criticisms of the movie, I enjoyed myself. This is mainly due to Tom Hardy being the perfect Eddie Brock and Venom. He seemed to put all his effort into the characters (even if he did sound like a kid imitating a New Yorker).
One other aspect of the movie I absolutely loved is how the writers wrote Venom’s character. Venom isn’t too edgy of a character. He’s an incredibly nuanced character with a love for human flesh, most of his hosts, and dry humor. They even got the little details down like how he uses chocolate as a substitute for humans (although just briefly mentioned) and how he wants to be a hero at the end of the day, no matter how many bodies he eats.
The introduction of the symbiotes was an excellent showcase of their powers and what they could do, you learn all the basics of their powers right in the first five minutes. Also the number of quick easter eggs would surely please the adamant hunters out there. Both end credit scenes were alright, the first gave us a first look at Woody Harrelson as the host of the Carnage symbiote Cletus Kasady, which is such a perfect casting choice.
The second scene was a sneak peek at the upcoming animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse and it looks absolutely fantastic. Speaking of Spider-Man, this movie does an excellent job without him, it makes it seem like Venom could be his own character dissociated from him.
If I had to give this movie a rating it would be a five or six out of ten. The rating is a bit generous given most of the movie’s glaring issues, but it was really entertaining as an action movie, a sci-fi movie AND a comedy.
If you want to see this film in theaters, be my guest, but I would suggest a more cost-effective choice (especially since I want Sony to relinquish the rights to the Spider-Man villains), just wait for it on a streaming platform.