VENOM ROLLS INTO THEATERS LIKE A ‘TURD IN THE WIND’

I’ll start off by saying that if you went to the movie theater and enjoyed “Venom,” you’re not wrong for liking it, but you should probably still know what’s wrong with it.

In some ways I might even recommend you go see Venom if you’re into playing Mystery Science Theater with your friends.

If you’re looking for Disney Marvel standards of filmmaking, however, you’ll be disappointed, to say the least.

Directed by Scott Fleischer of “Zombieland” fame and starring Tom Hardy, Venom is a Sony Marvel spinoff of the popular Spiderman character, centering around reporter Eddie Brock and his relationship with the alien symbiote known as Venom.

Confusingly, however, Spiderman is nowhere to be seen or heard in this alternate universe adaptation of the character, despite  Venom’s natural reliance on him for a majority of his character arcs.

In fact, it seems Disney is keeping their prized Spiderman universe far out of Sony’s reach, and with good reason. Venom tends to fall more in line with films such as “Green Lantern” or the first “Ghostrider,” though it slightly outperforms them in terms of quality CGI and visual style.

In other words, it’s the best superhero movie to come out of 2004.

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Between Hardy’s nasally, slapstick performance, the two-dimensional character arcs, and the pacing of a Slap Chop – not to mention the unnecessary goofy humor, reckless tone, and the plot consistency of a YouTuber’s salary – it can be hard to see the redeeming qualities of this movie. Those qualities, in my opinion, being Hardy’s dedicated and rather hilarious performance, and a few chuckle-worthy moments of banter between Venom and Eddie Brock.

Unfortunately, there’s just not much to really enjoy about Venom, aside from the mildly entertaining action and the goofy dialogue.

Speaking of dialogue, this movie could not be trying harder to be hip 2000s cool if it tried. Fleischer goes so far as to have apparently hired Eminem to write the theme song, and is so bold as to still have wailing guitar tracks play every time Hardy attempts to do “cool action” on-screen.

While comic book Venom might embody some of the same goofy humor as the film adaption, this movie  does no justice to what real fans of Venom would seem to want. Its chief problem, among many, is that at the plot’s core, Venom is a Spiderman villain, or anti-hero at best. He relies very heavily on Spiderman for his primary stories and driving character traits.

Without Spiderman to guide the Venom storyline and for context, there is little that can be done to bring the character to a fresh audience and make him endearing and enjoyable to watch.

All in all, Sony is truly the party to blame for this lackluster movie. Between a tight schedule, a limited budget, poor writing, and aggressive studio interference, Venom was always destined to be a critical nightmare, despite earning its money back in the box office.

With all this in mind, if you really need to waste a couple of hours, or if you just want to decompress and pass the time with a mentally unchallenging movie, then go see this film. Or, better yet, wait till it comes out on Netflix.

Venom gets a 1.5/5.

Advocate Staff