I Enjoyed Venom

Venom sounded like a great idea when it was announced, but closer and closer to the release date I grew less and less interested. I needed to get out of the house, and since Mandy wasn’t being shown at my local cinema Venom ended up being the next choice. Spoilers added by us.

Although the first third of the film nearly drove me to sleep, Venom had lots of great comedic moments. The main themes of the film include the relationships between two individuals and how a successful relationship can result in two individuals working together perfectly as one. Venom does this well, including a relationship with an ex, a relationship with a local shopkeeper, and a relationship with the titular symbiotic organism to develop some good character. Apart from the dull first third, the film does also have some jokes that fall flat along with some slowing down of the relationships being built. I suspect the latter is primarily because they plan to do a whole series of Venom films, with Tom Hardy already signing on for another two pictures. The jokes that fall flat aren’t too cringy and there was never a space of ten or twenty minutes where there was no laughter in the audience. This film is another example of how people have expected everything to be perfect in every single film that has been released in the past few years. Everyone is looking for the best films, but appear to not be pleased with a film that is fun, doesn’t take itself too seriously and is nothing more than good or even okay in some instances. You may have noticed this before in my pieces on Solo: A Star Wars Story and I Kill Giants if you read them. It’s okay to dislike a film; I do it all the time. But also don’t expect every film you watch to be the pinnacle of modern cinema.

Moving onto the story, after the first third it moved reasonably fluidly. The first third and its dullness can be attributed to the weird setting up of the film’s characters and story. I liked that the very first scene is about the symbiotes and one of them escaping from the scientists who have captured them. The one redeeming part of the first third is the journey we see the eventual villain, Riot, go through while making its way across the world. The rest of the first third is set-up for the human characters. Carlton Drake is the CEO of the company that has found the symbiotes and is trying to unlock their properties of symbiosis to use to further human development. The film is incredibly choppy with showing Drake and his progress while also setting up the protagonist: Eddie Brock, a journalist. It flicks between the progress Drake is making with Brock using information he obtained from his fiancée, Anne, who works for Drake’s company. It leads to them both getting fired after Brock confronts Drake on his human testing and that leads to them breaking up before the film shoves in a six month timeskip. It makes sense as to why the timeskip was included, but like most timeskips added into films, it simply makes the moment incredibly disjointed. After the timeskip, Drake continues to get closer and closer to success but one of the symbiotes he captured dies. One of the scientists, disgusted with his decision to use human test subjects, finds Brock and convinces him to help her bring Drake’s deeds to public attention. They break into the lab, and we get a great sequence showing him slowly working his way through and seeing what is happening. Eventually, he comes to an area where he sees a homeless woman that he knows. Unable to live with the symbiote, her body dies, and the symbiote latches onto Brock. From here comes the fantastic comedy between the symbiote, Venom, and Brock. We get a number of scenes of Brock travelling around with Venom as he tests out the powers he now has. He experiences some symptoms and ends up getting checked out by Anne’s boyfriend, a doctor. Before being able to get results, he starts being pursued by mercenaries sent by Drake. Brock and Venom break into Brock’s old workplace and try to place the information about Drake’s company on the desk of Brock’s old boss. These are the more interesting segments of the film. The final fight later on in the film isn’t too interesting, which I will get into later on, but here we see a lot of cool action shots with Venom playing around with the mercenaries as it went about beating them easily. The film ended up being a PG-13, and there are rumours that the film was initially going to be R-rated with some more head consuming by Venom, but unfortunately it seems the studio backed out. Films like Deadpool and Logan show how good and successful an R-rated picture can be, and something like Venom really needs to be in that range. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the film’s popularity be a lot higher if they made the film into an R-rated picture. Anne sees him running around as Venom and ends up taking him to her doctor boyfriend again. Brock gets told that Venom is a parasite and eventually his organs will rot away while Venom claims that it can stop that. While Venom is distracted, Anne turns on the MRI, which results in separating Venom from Brock. He walks out leaving Venom to Anne and her boyfriend, but, as he tries to get into the elevator, he gets captured by Drake’s mercenaries. A lot of these moments are quite forced in the film, only there to move the plot forward and have some kind of development for the other storylines. Although the rest of the film doesn’t put me to sleep like the first third, it doesn’t live up to the middle part only occasionally pumping in a couple of those comedic moments between Venom and Brock. Eventually Riot, the symbiote who escaped at the beginning of the film, reaches Drake after making its way from Malaysia. It agrees to attach itself to Drake in exchange for bringing the rest of the symbiotes to Earth using Drake’s technology. Venom attaches to Anne and rescues Brock from the mercenaries. Then with Venom attached back to Brock, they have a final showdown with Drake and Riot. Venom assures Brock that it doesn’t want to go along with Riot’s plan and that it would be happy on Earth with Brock as apparently it itself is a loner on its planet, like Brock is on his. The showdown, as I alluded to earlier, isn’t too interesting. It suffers from something that is in a few different pictures where the villain is extremely similar, if not the same, as the protagonist. You get a particularly dull fight with only a few redeeming factors. One of those factors in this final showdown is a short scene where as the two symbiotes are fighting each other they end up attaching to each other. As they slowly morph together you see all four of the characters trying to fight as hard as they can. Eventually, Riot absorbs them, but as it goes to finish launching the rocket that will get the rest of the symbiotes Anne plays a high-pitched sound, one of the symbiotes weaknesses along with fire, and it allows them enough time to separate from Riot and continue fighting. The film uses slow motion effectively, which is a rare occurrence in modern cinema, and symbolises the themes of the film, self and identity, quite well. They finally defeat Riot and Drake by exploding the rocket causing fire to surround them. Brock survives but Venom appears to be dead until a reveal in one of the last scenes in the film. In the middle of the credits, we get a scene showing the villain for the next film. The scene in and of itself is perfectly fine, but it brings up a similar question that I thought of while going to see Deadpool 2. Is this going to be too much Venom? This first film was perfectly fine, and I enjoyed it, but seeing that the sequel is going to be more of the same with a very similar villain does not give me too much hope. Now, if they manage to do some interesting stuff to isolate it from the first film, it could be a great project, but we will have to wait.

Onto characters, and we have an uncommon situation. The writing of the characters is quite dull and uninspiring, but all of the actors did a fantastic job of saving them and making them at least bearable if not great. This is a thing in a lot of other projects, but usually it’s one actor saving a character, while the others are terrible. But, in Venom, most of the actors make the characters at least reasonable, with Tom Hardy and Riz Ahmed making Brock and Drake very present characters. Starting off with Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock and Venom, the fact that they got Hardy to play both characters was a great idea and is starting to become a recurring theme for him. Eddie Brock has an interesting accent but after awhile you get used to it and it makes sense for the character and what they do with him. As I mentioned what takes this character up and above the expected result is Hardy’s performance. He has a lot of fun with the comedy scenes they do which brings up the overall level of the film. Venom itself was awesome to see in the action scenes. It was not only a cool character, but also had the same comedic vibe as Brock. Enough so that it linked them but not too much that they still remained two distinct characters. When it comes to the villain, the writing was generic but Riz Ahmed saved it similarly to how Hardy saved Brock. Drake has a way of talking and presenting himself in the film as a mad genius, with the emphasis on mad. Though one credit I give to the writing of Drake was that he wasn’t the generic evil villain with an evil goal. He worked towards something that he thought would legitimately help humanity and evolve them. Riot, unfortunately, was not up to the same standard as Venom. They didn’t do the same great job with making it similar but a distinct character from their primary host. Riot and Drake, although sharing the same goal (in a sense), don’t fit that well together. Drake is mad with a god complex that wants to help humanity even if it means their destruction, whereas Riot wants to go through destroying worlds to feed its people. It also appears not to be that mad, especially when compared to Drake. In fact, Riot is probably the most bland character in the film (and that’s saying something). Villains similar to the protagonist can be done well, as we see in some other Marvel films, but Riot gives me less hope for the future Venom films. The only other characters worth talking about are Anne, played by Michelle Williams, and Dan Lewis (her boyfriend), played by Reid Scott. Even then, both are pretty bland and only provide a certain amount of comedy or entertainment through the runtime. There is the section where Anne attaches to Venom, which could be even more interesting if they do more of that in any of the planned sequels, but since the character doesn’t have very much of a foundation, the character is open to where she could go. I doubt they will return with the doctor boyfriend. And even if they do, I doubt it will be anything more than a short comedic cameo. I hope that they either bring in some interesting villains or even some more side characters to liven up the cast. Otherwise the series of films could end up having to be carried by Tom Hardy.

Visually the film has a great skeleton for a wonderful visual identity but appears to give up at a certain point, leading the rest of the project to being either dull or basic in its composition. This may be another consequence of the film being downgraded to a PG-13 from an R-rated picture. Some of the darker tones that are hinted at throughout the film both in its action and visual themes may have been toned down or neutralised in order to fit better with what the film ended up being. It’s a huge shame, bringing some of those darker themes as an R-rated film while keeping the comedic scenes could’ve set the film in a distinct theme and feel that would’ve made it not feel like a generic action superhero film. That being said, some of the cinematography until that last fight was pretty good. It made it feel like a Venom film with its shot choice and speed. However, when it does get down to the last fight, it devolves into another generic action film final fight with choppy camerawork and monotone scenes where characters almost blend into the background and you have to wait till the calmer parts of the scene to catch up on what has been happening. It’s a shame, but as always we can hope for more in the sequel.

When it comes to sound, Venom does have a certain style to it. Weaving tracks of both Rock/Metal and Hip-Hop onto the soundtrack puts a very grimey and street feeling. It fits Brock falling from grace into a life he wouldn’t want and climbing back to a happy medium with an alien lifeform. The theme also applies to Brock’s tendencies to be more of an anti-hero than a regular superhero. Sound effects, especially those around Venom and the other symbiotes, were used effectively and gave the symbiotes a nice fluid feeling along with their visual designs. When Venom was in Spider-Man 3 back in 2007, it was more of an elastic feel to the parasyte, which fit the film as it was a Spider-Man film, but I most definitely prefer the more fluid, liquid feel to the Venom symbiote in this picture. Sound was one of the solid points in the film and it’s hard to find that many, if any, faults.

Overall, Venom gives a great premise and provides on a lot of the points it needed to, but the points it fails on are pretty large and result in a good film that was enjoyable but nowhere near the potential the film had. It will be interesting to see what direction the sequels go in and the results of those direction.

Fuel in the tank.

-Boad

Originally published at bodaciousboad.wordpress.com on January 21, 2019.