Beyond Rating: 2.5/5
No, this film is not as bad as Catwoman (sorry Halle), but it is still a disappointing entry for a film that had a huge amount of potential.
When the Venom film was announced and that it wouldn’t involve Spider-Man, it was a big surprise, especially given Sony’s record with their previous mis-use of Venom in Sam Raimi’s 2007 “Spider-Man 3”. However, this did give Sony the chance to properly flesh out an anti-hero rather than produce yet another superhero film. And this looked to be the case with the first two trailers, which quote him saying “this power … isn’t completely awful”, and the poster quote “the world has enough superheroes”. So it was disappointing to see these scenes were cut from the final product and instead we didn’t see much of the “anti” in the hero, beyond a few head eating jokes.
The plot is fairly simple, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is an investigative journalist who becomes the host of an alien symbiote when trying to take down the Life Foundation, whose head, Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), is trying to combine humans with symbiotes. Eddie and Venom must team up and learn to work together to stop Drake from bringing more symbiotes to Earth and taking over the planet.
Let’s start with the good. The relationship with Eddie and Venom is very compelling and is funny, possibly helped by the fact Tom Hardy provides the voice for Venom as well as playing the lead role. There are one or two twists with this relationship that adds extra layers to this dynamic, and you do really buy into it. The CGI in this film is very good, and that can always take audiences out of a film and can make a bad film really awful. The car chase scene that we see in the trailer is really well choreographed and it gives us our first full look at Venom in what is a very satisfying moment. But more than all of that, Tom Hardy’s acting in this is very impressive, especially in the first few scenes when Eddie has bonded with Venom. What makes it better is the knowledge that the restaurant scene was improvised, which shows how dedicated to this role Hardy is.
However, the fact remains that if you take Tom Hardy out of this film there isn’t a lot that stops this film from being pretty poor. A significant number of the action scenes are poorly shot, with the fights cut so much that you don’t really know what’s going on. The Life Foundation as a whole is a shambles, as it’s motivations seem very weird and frankly confused, and this is made even worse given the high quality of the cast involved. Another misuse of the cast is the poor script that they have to work with, meaning that Michelle Williams (who plays Eddie’s ex-girlfriend lawyer Anne) and Tom Hardy, who are both fantastic actors, had little to no chemistry as a couple. The dialogue was often bland and confused, with comedy put in randomly meaning it’s pretty hit and miss.
It could well be that the negative reviews largely stem from the disappointment at the prospect of what this film could have been versus what we got, but the fact remains that, despite Hardy’s best efforts, Venom is at best a mediocre film.
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