Venom: An Amorphous Blob of Black Goo

In my review of Spider-Man: Homecoming, I explained the complicated ownership of the Spider-Man franchise by Sony and how they buggered their handling of the license. Long story short: in order to hold onto the rights, they had to keep making Spider-Man movies, which they did at the expense of quality, hence how we ended up with hollow, cynical dreck like The Amazing Spider-Man. It got so bad that Marvel had to step in and take their toys back, but losing their main hero hasn’t deterred them, since they’ve shifted their focus to Spidey’s versatile rogue’s gallery. They’ve teased a series centered on The Sinister Six, and began a solo series for Venom. And since Venom is both a victim of Sony’s mishandling and a product of the dark edginess overload that dominated comics in the 90’s, the final result is the worst of both worlds.

Our story follows Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), an investigative journalist whose career is ruined after he ambushes and questions the ethical practices of billionaire tech mogul Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed). When he gets an inside tip that his accusations were correct, he breaks into Drake’s lab and discovers a Symbiote, a parasitic alien creature that can only survive in Earth’s atmosphere by possessing a human host. Drake has been trying to find matches for it by experimenting on homeless people, and every attempt so far has resulted in death. Once the Symbiote latches onto Eddie, it gets inside his head and grants him bizarre alien powers. Now Eddie is doing all he can to expose the truth and keep the beast in check.

I think my biggest problem with Venom is that, like our protagonist having constant arguments with the voice in his head, the movie suffers from a bad case of tonal schizophrenia. While it’s a superhero movie at its core, it also tries to wear a bunch of different hats. Sometimes it’s a comedy, sometimes it’s a gory monster flick (or as gory as you can be with a PG-13 rating, at least), and sometimes it tries to be all three at once. Probably the most emblematic part of the issue is the incoherent relationship between Eddie and Venom, the latter of which acts alternately as a shoulder demon, comedic foil and at one point even a wingman depending on what the situation calls for. The result is a weird trajectory where the first act is boring, the second is silly, and the third is unintentionally hilarious, and it all fits together about as well as a hippopotamus in a corset. Tom Hardy has said that most of his favorite scenes were cut, and after seeing the final result, I believe him. I’m not entirely convinced those missing scenes would’ve saved it, but I can see some avenues they could’ve explored if not for the limitations of its rating.

This shoddiness is also reflected in the craftsmanship. Venom takes a lot of influence from the dark-and-gritty era of superhero movies from the late 90’s and early 00’s, and while that era gave us gems like the first two X-Men movies, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Batman Begins, it also gave us dreck like Spawn, Daredevil and Catwoman. Unfortunately, those last three are what this reminds me of the most. It has Spawn’s ugly CGI, Daredevil’s confusing editing and cinematography, and Catwoman’s overly explained and convoluted bad guy plot. The locations are highly inconsistent. The movie takes place in San Francisco but shot in Atlanta, and more often than not it looks like Atlanta wearing a cheap San Francisco cosplay. There’s a final battle with the main villain that’s basically a more beefed up version of the hero, and since they look alike, shot in the dark and continuously morphing, it becomes impossible to tell who’s who.

Of course, the most maddening thing about this movie is the fundamentally wrongheaded attempt to make a solo Venom movie that has nothing to do with Spider-Man. Without getting into too much of a tangent, Eddie is supposed to be a foil to Peter Parker, showing what he could’ve become if he didn’t have Aunt May and Uncle Ben to teach him about great power and great responsibility. Since his character and motivation are both intrinsically tied to Spidey and Peter Parker, removing him from the formula would be like trying to make a movie about Professor Moriarty that makes no mention of Sherlock Holmes. Their way of reconciling this is playing up the schism between Eddie and Venom, except we already got a movie this year that did this way better with a fraction of Venom’s budget and a discount Tom Hardy.

Was there anything I liked about this? Admittedly, I do think the actors try their best to work with the material they’re given, but when your movie has Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams and Riz Ahmed, you should expect some at least decent performances. Some of the scenes where Eddie argues with himself and makes acts bizarrely in public that are pretty funny, kind of like a superhero rendition of The Mask. And while I don’t see what their characters see in each other, Hardy and Williams do have a smidge of chemistry as a couple. Sadly, that one admitted saving grace must’ve been wished upon with a monkey’s paw, because while I walked away thinking this mess was at least watchable, they undercut it with a mid-credit teaser featuring an actor embarrassing himself in a shitty Carrot Top wig teasing a possible sequel, and by the end, I walked out feeling like my brain was kicked in the balls by a middle finger.

Bottom line, Venom is a soulless, amorphous blob of black goo. It’s dated in all the worst ways, hilarious in all the wrong ways, all the actors are clearly too good for this project, and the whole thing just reeks of attention seeking desperation. A lot of people think there’s a conspiracy for Disney and Marvel to completely overtake the superhero genre, going so far as to buy a whole studio just to get the rights to use certain characters, but considering what companies like Sony have been doing with their properties, it’s probably for the best. Let this one roll away like a turd in the wind.

2/10