As Expected, I Disliked 'Venom'

As a huge fan of Venom, there are certain elements that I strongly prefer a film adaptation for the character to have.  The most vital of which is the connection to Spider-Man.  And since Spider-Man is now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this means that, if there’s going to be a Venom film, it should be set in the MCU.  Not only do I like this to be so because it would mean the character gets to participate in an already realized universe inhabited by other Marvel characters (i.e. potential crossovers!), but most importantly, it would mean that the character is going to be handled by Marvel Studios, which know what they are doing when it comes to translating Marvel comic book characters into the big screen properly.  Anything less would frustrate me.

Thus, since it was clear right from the very beginning of production that the Tom Hardy-starred Venom movie is going to be Sony’s own thing – separate from Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and the MCU – I just knew that I would hate it.  The probability was high that the movie was going to fail to give the character and his story justice.  And worse, this meant Venom in the MCU wouldn’t ever happen in the near future – probably, ever.

When the trailers dropped, I thought they suck, enforcing my pre-existing loathing for Venom.  Thus, when it was finally released in theaters, I had no incentives to buy a ticket.  I decided to wait for it to become “digitally available” first before I go watch it.  And I was glad I did; as expected, it’s disappointing.

It’s a badly written film.  The script is goofily inept.  Whenever I tried to get into the story, glaring inconsistencies took me out immediately.  For example, in once scene, the symbiote introduces itself to Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock using “I”, but just a few lines later, it used “us” and “we.”  It then switches between plural and singular pronouns a few times in that scene.  It was annoying.  Besides, in the comics and TV shows, “we” denotes that Eddie Brock and the symbiote are talking in accord, not because the symbiote sometimes refers to itself as “we.”  In addition, in that same scene, the symbiote establishes that it “knows everything” about Eddie, but two scenes later, it isn’t aware who Anne (Michelle Williams) – Eddie’s ex-fiancée – is.  Argh.

There also a couple of bad acting moments.  Seriously.  It’s either the defective script, with its bland characterizations and laughable dialogue, is seeping through the actor’s performance or the director just didn’t bring effort out of his actors.  Tom Hardy, who is definitely a good actor, was hammy for stretches at a time (it’s possible that he was being so intentionally to make fun of the script).

It does have some entertainment value, yes.  But it was exclusively derived from derivative action set pieces and the presence of humor – more than half of which is due to unintentional comedy from the bad acting, laughable dialogue, and stupid narrative.  And by going for a “PG-13” rating, the violence lacks oomph, depreciating the value of its most fun scenes.

So, yeah, I didn’t like Venom overall.  Unfortunately, due to its profitable box office numbers, there will be probably more of these movies on the way. 

Miscellaneous musings (w/ SPOILERS):

• It amused me to realize the parallels of Upgrade and Venom.  Not only do their respective stars look alike, but both movies involve: a.) a man who had hit rock bottom; b.) a foreign entity going inside that said man; c.) the man hears its voice inside his head; and d.) it can take control of the man’s body and make him perform superhuman actions.  Heck, the two movies even have similar scenes where the entity takes over the man’s body to fight while the man’s facial expression is that of disbelief and horror.
• There’s a scene where one of the villain’s henchmen reports, “I don’t have eyes on him.”  If this movie was “R”, the logical punchline of that scene would have been Venom gorging his eyes out.
• One of the scenes that were not intended to be funny but I laughed at is when Venom takes out a SWAT team.  When he was about to eat one of them, Eddie Brock stops the symbiote because, according to him, “We do not eat policemen!”  I had to laugh because Venom just violently tossed and beat up the cops to the point where it’s very much probable that a couple of them got their necks or backs broken.  If Brock meant that they should not kill policemen, it was a useless remark since I’m pretty sure they already did.

• In the mid-credits scene, Eddie Brock visits someone in prison to interview.  This turned out being the psychopathic serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson).  Setting up the sequel, the future supervillain utters, “When I get outta here – and I will – there’s gonna be Carnage.”  I would have laughed by how cringingly on-the-nose it was if not for the fact that Woody Harrelson’s cameo performance was pretty great – making me intrigued of seeing him portray Cletus Kasady/Carnage for an entire feature-length film.
• When Venom was shown in theaters, there was a teaser clip of the upcoming Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse at the end of its credits.  I find it funny that the movie’s Blu-ray/Digital version is cut in the same way.
• If it was totally up to me, I would have put Venom into the MCU, where in a span of several movies, his arc develops from being a Spidey villain to an anti-hero to, eventually, Agent Venom – my most favorite incarnation of the character.  In the end, he becomes part of a Secret Avengers movie or joins the Guardians of the Galaxy, like his comic book counterpart.