Review of Venom (2018) by Ewoud B — 05 Oct 2018

Actually had no intention to watch Venom. The trailers made it look like another Amazing Spiderman kind of bad movie, which would've been unimaginative and boring. But then some reviews came out, saying that the movie was Catwoman bad or early 2000's superhero movie bad. After that I got intrigued and I watched it.

While there's certainly a lot of stuff to criticise about Venom, I'm actually going to praise it a bit. To me the movie was certainly not Catwoman bad, it had some unintentional humor and the Venom you see in this movie is not the Venom (or Eddie Brock) you know from the comics. But it's a more faithful adaptation than Catwoman.

Secondly this movie is not even Amazing Spiderman bad. Because this movie at least manages to BE a Venom movie. The movie focuses on Venom all the way and it's not secretly a Sinister Six prologue or something like that. But the story does go all over the place and it's not structured well.

We have an introduction of Eddie Brock and his life and at one point the movie just suddenly jumps to six months later. Which is a bad screenwriting thing because it immediately clarifies that the first 15 to 20 minutes we saw, don't even really matter to the movie. The only thing it does is show us a side of Eddie Brock that' s different than the Eddie Brock we see in the rest of the movie. The six months later bit also doesn't really make sense, because the story kicks off with someone contacting Eddie Brock six months after he was a relevant guy. Why would anyone contact this bum he is now as their first big move? He should at least be plan F at this point in his life.

The bad guy's plan also keeps shifting throughout the movie, which is very confusing and Michelle Williams unfortunately wasn't needed in this movie at all.

But whenever Venom's on screen the movie becomes pretty entertaining. Or whenever Eddie Brock and the symbiote are interacting with each other, it gets cool and interesting. It's everything around them that doesn't really work.

It's a run of the mill superhero movie that's decent and watchable, but nothing truly great.

Also Sony did it again. They put the last scene of the movie in the trailer AGAIN.

WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THIS SONY MARKETING PEOPLE???