Review of Venom (2018) by Khalil C — 06 Oct 2018

Let me start by saying that as the trailers advertised, Venom is the anti-hero par excellence. Anyone with a glimpse of what Venom is, would agree that this movie was off target and here's why.

****Warning: spoilers ahead****.

The movie starts out with an interesting though unrealistic twist of spacecraft crash on Earth (the design and functionality of the aircraft are a bit futuristic, but it's ok, no major harm done). Forward, fascinating creatures on board; on escape ok; fast forward back to the lab.

We spend half of the movie trying to understand why the symbiosis is not working and this was actually interesting, especially when the idea of "compatibility" is provided, similar to "organ transplant", pretty cool. All along however, we would assume to understand why would Eddie Brock be a compatible host and we look forward to see the reasoning. Nevertheless, no reasoning is provided. Similarly, we are not provided any rationale of how the Riot and Carlton Drake were compatible or how Venom and Anne also were also able to achieve symbiosis. After spending half the movie experimenting on compatibility, then comes another chaotic sequence: Eddie Brock sick.

To depict an illness with the host-parasite interaction is frankly a smart approach, but was excessively depicted. The longer this sequence, the less impressive Venom's personality became.

The sudden shift in Venom's agenda from wanting to bring his people to not because he was a "loser", was such a bad move. Very immature and unbelievable.

Fast forward Venom vs. Riot: very useless and quick. The story seemed out of control and not convincing, just like Venom suddenly had a change in heart.

Also, allowing the symbiotes to already have a name "Venom" and "Riot" was A MESS. Like seriously, English names? Really? Of the million others, would one be called Shakespeare too? The name Venom was special between Eddie Brock and the symbiote.

Acting-wise, it was a shame to see Tom Hardy seemingly appearing like an alcoholic 80% of the time. I could not believe that this person played Bane to perfection, yet here he's constantly drunk-appearing with awful accent.

Overall, I believe they could have done a better job scriptwriting this movie. Also, as might have noted by other reviews, Venom might have afterall needed Spider-Man to be well establish. Perhaps it is the symbiote's hate for Spider-Man and Eddie Brock's hate for Peter Parker that made Venom venomenous.