Venom is a 2018 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name directed by Ruben Fleischer starring Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock / Venom, along with Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, and Scott Haze. The movie revolves around an alien symbiote that latches on to Eddie and gives him superpowers. Below is my disappointing review Venom (2018) movie review
For most of the movie Eddie is portrayed as this simple nice guy who is down on his luck that literally causes him to lose everything…besides his giant apartment in the middle of San Francisco. Seriously, how did he afford it? Anyway, after he sticks his nose in something outside of his pay grade, he loses everything including his girlfriend. However, he acquires an alien virus that talks to him and transformers into a creature known as Venom. With it, he starts to go against the bad guy and this is where the story could have started. I didn’t care for much before this point so in my opinion it was just filler. Just say he is hardcore journalist and show him getting into trouble via few newspaper clippings and I will get everything I need to decide whether to care or not about his character.
Anyway, when Venom is unleashed, problems start to arise. Everybody comes after Eddie trying to take away the symbiote. However, this is where we get see Venom in action. In comics he is portrayed as being violent (he likes to bite people’s heads off), but in the movie due to it being PG-13, he bites people but the scene changes fast so we don’t get to see any gore. As for other scenes, we get to see him throw people around and “crush” them yet we don’t see anything violent. Otherwise, the scenes are fine but a lot of them are extremely dark.
The ending has two big creatures going against each other yet the action scene is filmed in a way that it looks like two dark CGI creatures either wrestling or humping, both guesses would be fairly accurate. On top of this we have no idea what their weaknesses are so it comes off as just aliens fighting and the audience not giving a crap about who wins. Also, there is no blood, just roaring and punching. I’ve seen cats fighting that were more exciting.
Here’s bunch of things that didn’t make sense in the movie or were left unanswered (some of these are spoilery). I am unsure of Venom’s powers. What was Riot’s plan concerning the invasion of Earth? What happened to yellow symbiote? After infecting the first guy, how is symbiote returned to his capsule? (if weapon exists to stop symbiote, why wasn’t it used on Eddie), Why didn’t the doctor helping Eddie take pictures in the lab take it herself? Where were all the cameras in Drake’s lab? Why did we have such a short ending (less than 5 min)?
The point is that this movie was rushed. A lot of things were not clearly explained that were not part of my little question cloud above. The movie was PG-13 when every fan expected it to be rated R for some really grisly violence. If you are adopting existing material based on violent comic book, adopt it right. Don’t worry about attracting people to theaters. The fans will come if word spreads that the movie is true to the comics out there. Anyway, the action is OK but very dark. The effects are all over the place, sometimes looking good while at times being atrocious. Best thing I can say about Hardy’s performance as this twitchy journalist with a lot of face/body ticks that comes off as charming and likable.
Thanks for reading my Venom (2018) movie review!
