I was beyond confused that the Spiderman villain was getting a standalone movie. The befuddlement grew more when true stars like Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, and Riz Ahmed signed onto Venom, and the Zombieland guy was directing it, and the rumor mill put the film into R rated territory. Ok, um what? With that type of pedigree I started to get excited for something really different. Then the rating was dropped down to PG-13, and there were stories about everyone unhappy with the direction of the movie? Huh? And finally, going into Venom expecting a train wreck, I watched a confused but not terrible piece of forgettable fun. At least Venom’s consistent in its inconsistency…zagging when you think it’s gonna zig.
The story centers around Carlton Drake’s (Riz Ahmed) Elon Musk like space exploration company. In space Drake discovers some symbiotes that can bond to hosts, which Drake hopes to use to live in outer space. So naturally, he conducts illicit human testing on the down low. This naturally leads to lawsuits, of which Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) is working on the defense team for Drake’s company. Anne is dating Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) an investigative journalist who sniffs foul play at the Drake company, and uses his girlfriend’s status to call truth to power on Drake. However, in doing so, Brock ends up bonding with one of Drake’s symbiotes, named Venom, which infuses itself into every facet of Brock’s existence….which Drake has been trying unsuccessfully to do for months, making Brock his new most valuable asset.
It must be said that most of Venom is hot garbage. Character development rests solely in the hands of Tom Hardy and the Venom Symbiote. If you’re not one of those characters, you’re working in service of them only, ESPECIALLY if you’re a woman. So thanks Michelle Williams for lending us your Oscar level credibility to be a thankless love interest, setting aside your amazing doctor boyfriend to help the asshole who got you fired from your job and puts you in constant danger! Thanks a lot! Thanks Jenny Slate, for pushing the plot forward with your change of heart, only to have you murdered once your plot driving is no longer necessary! Wonderful! The other big glaring issue is the action sequences are not really fun and VERY hard to follow. There’s a motorcycle chase that’s kinda fun since Eddie is basically a passenger along for the ride in his own chase, but there’s somewhere between a billion and a trillion cuts which makes the sequence a giant headache to figure out what’s going on. The third act is clearly leading to a Drake/Brock showdown with the symbiotes, which amounts to 2 grayish black CGI spidermen liquiding into each other so there’s absolutely no way to know who wins/loses the fight. GREAT ending. TOTALLY worth it.
And yet, I see the potential in the story Ruben Fleischer is trying to tell. The best moments of the story are the inner fight for control over Eddie Brock’s body between Brock and Venom. Venom is a compelling comic book character because of the inner conflict it creates in the tragic Brock character, acting as a tool to be used for good or for bad. Venom’s insatiable hunger leads Eddie to freak out and have a dialogue with his “partner” about taking things too far when heads may or may not get bitten off (it is PG-13, so we really don’t see the act…). If the writing were better, Eddie would have more control in this situation, and would have to reckon with letting the demon loose, which can be compelling stuff. There’s also a really creepy sexual element that would have been fascinating to see, as the host inhabits Michelle Williams for a bit too, leading to an intriguing forced intimacy that could have severe ethical implications. However, it’s clear some studio head wanted to make Venom have greater mass appeal, so all the really interesting parts of the story were eroded away in favor of the generic nonsense we get here, leading to a bipolar film that has NO idea what it’s saying.
As is, Venom is another forgettable Sony superhero movie that they clearly made to keep the rights to their remaining superhero characters. You know what’s funny? The best version of Venom the movie already came out earlier this year. That movie is called Upgrade, and it’s about a guy inhabited by a computer that controls his body movements from his spine, forcing an inner conflict between the computer and the man host. Sound familiar? The weirdest part of this comparison? Is that if you’re not looking closely, the star of Upgrade, Logan Marshall-Green, looks like Tom Hardy. Is it possible that Venom was inspired by the filmmakers plagiarizing Upgrade? The world may never know…