Movie Review: Venom (2018)

[Dave Gray]

Venom (2018)

Premise: A takedown journalist gets too close to one of his stories, where he gets infected by an alien parasite and gains powers as the anti-hero Venom.

Rating: Bad fun.

This movie is pretty dumb.  The actual scene to scene setup doesn't really make sense.  The action isn't great and the set-pieces are janky.  The character motivations are silly and one-dimensional.  It doesn't really matter, because Tom Hardy is playing this character so oddly that it makes it funny (not sure if intentional) and watchable.

Hardy is kind of a lunatic.  He's really leaning into the performance.  At the core, this is a story of a guy who's not in control of his body or inner-monologue.  We've seen this 100 times before in movies like The Mask, with a Jekyl/Hyde complex in a single character, though I suppose Venom is his own character that lives on its host.  This is a bad story.  It's just that Hardy is so emotive and really giving it everything that it elevates the material.

I can't really recommend this movie to those of you who aren't otherwise interested in it, but I will say I wasn't expecting to like it, and I had way more fun than I expected.

[Tenshot13]

It was an okay movie.  They made a good Venom, but a terrible Eddie Brock and a badish story overall.  I think this movie get's some slack because the last version of Venom was so bad in Spider-Man 3.

[masterfins]

I'm not really into this genre of film, so I would take a pass on watching it.  There are plenty of movies on my list that I would rather watch.  Thanks for the review though.

[Phishfan]

I started watching it a few times but never got very far with any attempt.

[Sunstroke]

It was an okay movie.  They made a good Venom, but a terrible Eddie Brock and a badish story overall.  I think this movie get's some slack because the last version of Venom was so bad in Spider-Man 3.

I agree with all 5 points made here...

[Dave Gray]

I don't know this story, prior to this movie, but I could've sworn that Eddie Brock was an astronaut or something like that....and wasn't he dating Gwen Stacey or something???

[Tenshot13]

I don't know this story, prior to this movie, but I could've sworn that Eddie Brock was an astronaut or something like that....and wasn't he dating Gwen Stacey or something???

A few different versions here.  In Spider-Man 3, he dated Gwen Stacy, but not in the comics.  In the comic books, there was an astronaut, it was J. Jonah Jameson's son John Jonah Jameson III.  He dated Mary Jane, and he later became the villain Man-Wolf after returning from space.

Eddie's whole story was he did shady dealings and lied about Spider-man in one of his articles, it blew up in his face and he got fired for it.  He blamed Spider-Man.  When Spider-Man rejected the symbiote, it latched onto Eddie Brock and they became Venom.

[SlothVomit]

It was an okay movie.  They made a good Venom, but a terrible Eddie Brock and a badish story overall.  I think this movie get's some slack because the last version of Venom was so bad in Spider-Man 3.

I agree with all 5 points made here...

I second this. I'm going to see Let There Be Carnage tonight with the same mindset I went in watching the first Venom, awful fun. However i'm biased as Carnage is and always be in my top three favorite Marvel characters.

[Tenshot13]

I second this. I'm going to see Let There Be Carnage tonight with the same mindset I went in watching the first Venom, awful fun. However i'm biased as Carnage is and always be in my top three favorite Marvel characters.

Yeah Carnage is my favorite.  I was stoked when I saw Harrelson was playing Cletus Kasady, but unfortunately I haven't heard good things about his movie.