Venom – Film Review

Venom as a character is very popular in the Spider-Man catalogue of characters. For the first solo film of the character after his botched appearance in ‘Spider-Man 3’, Sony was able to make him work as a character. Though that this film was created in order for Sony to build a Marvel Universe outside or adjacent to the MCU, it does shine in its ability to focus on one singular character than setting up a whole universe. If the main character of your universe that you start with doesn’t work, then your universe has no solid foundation.
Venom is an enigma in comparison to a lot of foundation films to cinematic universes.

For this films strengths there is casting — Tom Hardy does a great job emoting Venom on screen that the relationship between the two is what holds the movie together. There such great Jekyll and Hyde mentality shown on screen that it makes it fun to watch the characters talk to each other. Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Jenny Slate and the rest of the cast are given not much to work from with a clunky script that needs a lot of polishing for some better dialogue. Luckily for the future of this potential franchise they have great actors to work with to move forward. This film has the fortune to have something to work with rather than something someone shouldn’t touch again.

Eyes! Lungs! Pancreas! So many snacks, so little time!

I think for the next film that the chemistry between Hardy and Williams needs some work to have that energy those two as actors have pop more and feel like they have had a strong relationship. I did appreciate that Michelle Williams, Annie did do more than an average female costar lead. She had some depth and action scenes. I felt that the film needed a more consistent tone, if that was set in the sequel so the film was marketed stronger the expectations would be better met for a more accepted film critically. The more cynical dark humor that is sprinkled throughout to make it have its own Anti-Hero aesthetic the better it has to separate itself as a franchise. I did feel as though a lot of the time in the movie where they kept saying “shit” that they really wanted to make this an R rated fun fare like ‘Deadpool’ but wanted a more mass appealing film to get a better return on investment by making it PG13.

If they want to have a PG13 universe of their own then I would stick to that and make sure that it felt as fun as the interactions Eddie and Venom have in the first film. If the series needs to be campy-dark-cynical-fun, then let it be that way. I would say that this is not on any way a bad film — it’s even better than most of the mid-00’s comic book films that were god awful. This is a throwback film that needs a bit of updating. You don’t need to rush to see this but I would see it at some point

6/10