Venom: Let There Be Carnage (a movie review post)

 

I suppose I forgot how much I enjoyed the first Venom movie. I know I have because I went back an read my review and it expresses a degree of appreciation greater than what I remember, which means I should probably re-watch it. Part of the problem is that I have no great liking for Tom Hardy, except, I guess, as Venom, because I clearly enjoyed him in the first movie, and I did again in this one. He is quite good as Eddie Brock.

Still, I was going to skip this one until it "came out on DVD" (LOL), because I had no one to go see it with, BUT my son (the younger one) found out that the post-movie clip ties into the MCU and, so, he wanted to go see it (even though he has not seen the first one). I'm glad I didn't skip it. The relationship between Eddie and Venom is, for lack of a better way to express it, fun. My son laughed all through the first half of the movie.

My impression, without going back and re-watching the first one, is that this one is better. Don't take my word for it.

I do have one complaint... Look, it's me; what do you expect?

This is not exactly about the movie...
I mean, it is, but...

It's Woody Harrelson, okay? I like Harrelson. A lot. And he is really good in the role. Seriously, he is. BUT! But...Look, Harrelson is at least a decade older than me, and they have him playing a guy who is supposed to be in his 20s. And, hey, they do a great job with the makeup. Most of the time, it works but, every once in a while, during a closeup, you can just see his age. And, then, it doesn't work. It feels kind of weird, actually. I feel like Sony could have found someone of an appropriate age to play the part. It's not like Harrelson is any extra draw for this movie. They're not fooling some Boomer into going to see a Venom movie just because Harrelson is in it.

I guess it's a small complaint. It's just... weird.

Michelle Williams may be better in this one? I don't know. She's so generic to me, I feel like she could be anyone. Don't get me wrong, she's fine in the movie. There's not a lot for her to do to allow her to show any real acting talent. Reid what's-his-name, who I think of as Dan-from-Veep who also plays Dan in this movie, has more room to show off. And I like him pretty well.

Look, the movie is really about Venom and the relationship between Venom and Brock, and it completely succeeds at that. The conflict with Carnage is mostly secondary. Oh, which brings me to the only other issue I have with the movie: it's presented as a given that Carnage would want to kill his "father." Why? There's no reason given. Carnage is born and immediately wants to do away with "daddy." No one bothers to wonder why, not even, or especially, Venom. So maybe this is how it is on the symbiote planet? That seems like it would make it difficult to have any kind of society. But it's never addressed, and that one thing is kind of nagging at me.

That said, it's a fun movie. If you don't mind the plethora of dead bodies because, yeah, Carnage lives up to his name. It's not gory, though, or anything like that, but it's clear that Carnage is leaving a trail... um... that's not a big enough word... a freeway of bodies behind him as he goes. He kills everyone. So... fun? Look, they don't show the bodies, okay. That would be horrific. As it is, it's fun.

And, yes, the post-movie clip does promise, in a sense, a Venom/Spider-Man meeting. Evidently not in the next Spider-Man movie, though. It will be interesting to see what Marvel does with Venom as an import rather than re-creating him.

Oh, I suppose I failed to mention Shriek. She feels mostly like a MacGuffin. Which is kind of weird, I suppose, to say about a character, but she's really insignificant to the actual plot. I guess she needed to be there because she's in the "Maximum Carnage" storyline in the comics and to give Cletus some direction. -shrug- She's fine; she just feels superfluous.

Look, ignore all the negative stuff I said. It makes it sound worse than it is, because it's not worse at all. I actually wish I could sit down and watch both of them back-to-back, right now, but I guess I will have to wait to do that.

Venom (a movie review post)

Where do I even start with this? I mean, a Venom movie without Spider-Man? How do you even? Just the idea sounds insane. And with Tom Hardy... I'm sure I've mentioned how not a fan of Tom Hardy I am.

But it's Venom, so I went to see it. Which is not to say that I'm some huge Venom fan, at least not of what he grew into, but, back when he was first introduced, he was a pretty cool and innovative character.

So let's start there, at the beginning. Which is to say that Venom has a very... problematic... origin.

An origin that I'm not going to get into, right now, because it has nothing to do with the movie. I only bring it up because when Venom was first introduced as a character outside of the comics (back in one of the animated Spider-Man shows from the 90s), they needed a non-Secret Wars origin for the symbiote, so they chose to have it be from outer space. Which you can't really argue, anyway, because when the "suit" was first introduced, no one knew it where it came from other than that it was on the Beyonder's war planet.

All of that to say that the origin in the movie is derived less from the comic books and more from a previously established pop culture origin story that more people are probably familiar with than the number of people who know that actual origin of the alien symbiote. That part of it, I can give a pass.

I'm less comfortable with the part of it where Venom is part of an alien invasion force. That coupled with the human names for the symbiotes (oh, yes, there are more than one!) gave that aspect of the movie a bit of a Transformers feel.

And I miss the spider on Venom. That feels to me as if it is part of the character and leaving it off (because in this origin without the involvement of Spider-Man, why would there be a spider?) takes away somewhat from the character.

Overall, though, they did a fine and decent job with coming up with an origin for the character, and I do hope Venom and Spider-Man end up in a movie together... Well, this Venom and the current Spider-Man under Marvel's control, because I think that would turn out to be... great? Yeah, probably great.

Which brings me to Tom Hardy. He was surprisingly good. They made the Eddie Brock character a bit more... I don't know. In the comics, Brock was a loser. Just a loser. A wannabe. He had a beef with Parker because Parker wouldn't work with him, which was because Brock was a no-talent loser. This iteration of Brock starts him out at the top, not just competent but exceptional, then they bring him down and make him a loser. Washed up. Hardy played both ends of that spectrum believably, so I have to give him kudos for that. And he pulled off playing against a disembodied voice, so I have to give him credit for that, too. Maybe Hardy just needs to quit working with Nolan, because Nolan seems intent on making Hardy into nothing more than a mumbling pair of lips.

Then there's Michelle Williams who is a bowl of boiled noodles. Just the noodles with nothing on them. Not even butter. I suppose there are some people out there who like plain noodles, but they don't taste like much and have no flavor or character. Neither does Williams. She's good at delivering her lines, but there's nothing much to her. She's always the same, and she felt more like a placeholder here than anything else.

It was, however, nice to see Jenny Slate, who was so... normal in this role that I kept questioning whether it was really her.

My final analysis is that this movie is better than every single DC movie that has come out. Hands down. In fact, the DC movies don't even get close. No, it's not as good as the Marvel Studios movies, though I'd say it holds its own against Fox's X-Men films, but the only DC movie that's even on the same playing field is Wonder Woman. So, yeah, I'd go see another Venom movie -- and they teased one in the clip in the credits -- though it's unclear whether it will get a second one since it seems to be under performing a bit. Well, you know, you leave out Spider-Man and it loses a lot of its draw. Tom Hardy isn't a big enough name to get people into the theaters on his own, and most people's only experience with Venom is Spider-Man 3.

All of which is to say that you're not going to be missing out if you don't watch this. Unfortunately. It's a pretty standard superhero kind of movie even if this particular "hero" does have a taste for eating brains. But it doesn't tie into anything else, not at the moment, anyway. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens with Sony's non-Spider-Man Spiderverse to know if this is a critical movie or not.