Disclaimer: This review contains spoilers for Venom
Venom is a fast-paced movie with plenty of humor and a great supporting cast. Tom Hardy, the lead role, holds this movie up with his fantastic portrayal of Eddie Brock. If you’re a fan of the comics, you might not be too big of a fan of Brock, but Hardy’s portrayal makes him memorable and likeable and has you feeling for him throughout the entire movie. Everything in this movie happens quickly, but I like how they included easter eggs from the comics to make the audience giddier about seeing a stand-alone Venom movie. The visuals make the film interesting. I love the characters, and just enjoyed the movie overall.
A Riot of a Film
Image from IMDb
The plot starts off strong with some background for Hardy’s character, and it gave a logical excuse for why this movie was set in San Francisco instead of New York. Brock is a journalist who wants to get the best story, which sometimes makes him a bit of an ass. He has his own show that he uses to bring people down and bring bad people to light. He’s a bold reporter and tends to go after people even when he shouldn’t. He has a strong ethical code, which is shown when despite his boss telling him not to go after the most powerful man, Carlton Drake, Brock still decides to do his job. Just because someone has money and power doesn’t mean they shouldn’t own up to their crimes.
The relationship between Brock and Anne is an interesting one. They are together at the beginning of the movie, and then because of unfortunate circumstances, they end up breaking up. This created an interesting dynamic to watch because Brock’s life goes even more downhill, while Anne begins a new relationship not long after the initial breakup. This new relationship also helped with the plot development because Anne’s new doctor boyfriend was able to run tests on Brock and help him once he started acting strange. It was neat to see how they both cared for Brock, even though they really shouldn’t have.
Image from IMDb
Venom is a semi-serious movie, but I like the humor the character of Venom added. He makes the film more amusing to watch, and the humor of his character mixes well with the seriousness and darkness of the movie. The voice acting for Venom also adds to the creepiness of his character. The only part that was a bit odd is when the head would come out to talk to Eddie, so it was just Venom’s head with tendrils leading to Eddie’s back. This is homage to the comics, but I think it looked weird on screen. It isn’t my favorite part, and I felt as if they could have done it better.
The action in this movie is beautiful. There is so much of it, so it was nice not just seeing a few fight scenes in a movie. This movie uses the many fight sequences to show off the power and viciousness of Venom, which I enjoyed. We didn’t get to see him in just one instance, which helped up the wow factor. Venom shows off with his fighting, and it was cool to watch. A favorite scene of mine was towards the end, the final showdown between Venom and Riot. That scene, CGI and all, is done beautifully. Everything about it is amazing, and just elevates the movie in general. Two symbiotes fighting is so cool to see on the big screen, and I love that they took advantage of everything they could do with this scene.
Sym-bi-oh-no
Image from IMDb
The plot begins quickly and never lets up pace from start to finish. This is one of the few faults of this movie is that it was so fast-paced. I also think this is partly due to the film’s PG-13 rating because it felt like some of the scenes were cut abruptly, and that could be due to the film not being rated R. Apparently, there were 40 minutes of scenes cut-out to make Venom have a rating of PG-13. This lower rating holds the film back because Venom is a violent creature, and sometimes that violence couldn’t be shown. One instance in particular is when Venom bit off a dude’s head, but the film couldn’t show that sort of violence and graphicness. That took away from who Venom really is because watching it, there’s a disconnect between Venom’s actions and what is shown on screen
I also must mention the film’s pronunciation of the word symbiote. In the trailers for the movie leading up to the release, they pronounced it like sym-bye-ote instead of sym-bee-ote. This led to a lot of flak because people knew that wasn’t the general consensus of fans for how it should be pronounced. In the film, they changed it to where everyone said sym-bee-ote instead, so I liked how the producers listened to the audience and changed it.
We are Venom
Overall, this movie is dark, funny, and beautiful. It still managed to hold its own and create a unique plot when it wasn’t allowed to have any traces to Spider-Man. The movie is a little too fast-paced at points, but the viewer is left feeling satisfied and wanting more of the fan-favorite anti-hero by the end of the movie. It is refreshing and just cool to see something different, and that makes Venom stand out. Also, the end credits scene introducing a certain character drives excitement for potential sequels of Venom.
Images: IMDb
Featured image: Venom Site
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