Article author: Janathan Maheswaran
It may be bad but I’ll be damned if it’s not a lot of fun
As I was rewatching Venom for the first time, I came to realize that not every movie needs to have good pacing or a Goodfellas caliber of script, as long as people enjoy it as it is, you can be sure that you made a pretty good movie.
Venom is a Marvel Comics character who first appeared in Amazing Spider-man #252 (May 1984) as a living alien costume for Spider-man. This is the character’s first-ever standalone movie with Eddie Brock as the main character and not Harry Osborn.
Venom is by far the worst superhero movie to come out in 2018, but guess what? I loved it! I mean sure, it is pretty bad, the director, Ruben Fleischer could barely have any fun with it, it had an amazing cinematographer, Matthew Libatique who most likely didn’t have time to set up his shots and made this movie look like a soap opera. This is the same guy who shot Mother! (2017) and A Star Is Born (2018).
The writing is just as bad and it feels like Hardy is in a completely different movie unlike the rest of the cast. But that didn’t stop me from loving it, because you know why? It was fun. Pure fun. While I am going to criticize this movie, I will try to not criticize the filmmakers seeing as how they most likely didn’t have a lot of creative freedom while making this movie. I’m not going to blame Ruben Fleischer, I'm not going to blame Tom Hardy or anyone else from the crew. As i said I LOVE Venom and I love it because Tom Hardy loves Venom.
I can see that he’s having fun improvising his way through scenes. Whoever’s idea it was to make Venom and Eddie stuck with each other 24/7, is a genius, a total godsent. It's such an amazing concept and if the filmmakers were given a chance to hone in on that element, we would’ve ended up with something fun and hilarious like Deadpool (2016).
SPOILERS AHEAD: Character implementation and story beats will be discussed from here in on. If you want to see this peculiarly crafted cinematic extravaganza, please step off for now and come back later when you have experienced the movie for yourself.
The first 1/3 of the movie with Eddie and Anne is just utter garbage. There is just no chemistry and we know almost nothing about their relationship. Calton Drake played by the otherwise talented Riz Ahmed is just a bad villain although his acting was great. And I also think that Riot probably overtakes Steppenwolf’s role as the worst movie villain of all time. He has zero character development and all we know is that he wants to take over the world with the rest of the symbiotes and nothing else.
Now I get why they didn’t choose Carnage as the villain because he’s a fan favorite so, it's best to store him for the sequel. But what boggles my mind is that they could’ve chosen anyone! Even a Spider-Man villain like Kraven the Hunter for the movie.
It’s like they chose the villain that looks and feels the most like Carnage but isn’t Carnage. In my opinion, this movie would’ve been better off not being an origin story and just start Eddie off as Venom. Just give Hardy the camera and let him have fun. This movie shows that a character like Venom doesn’t need to be serious or dark and that it can be fun and goofy.
Sony has all these tools they just need to let filmmakers make the films. I could talk about the 6-month jump or the stupid choice of music (Don’t get me wrong; Eminem’s song was great) or the screenplay that feeds you all this information at one thinking that the audience are idiots.
Then again, is anyone in actuality surprised it turned out like this? Sony has done the same thing over and over again. I mean, they hired the director of Zombieland which is a movie like Venom that could’ve been dark but chose to be fun and goofy. I think that we can all learn from Venom that you can still enjoy a bad movie even though everything about it is just garbage (except for the acting). It may be the worst superhero movie behind Man of Steel (2013) and Batman Vs Superman (2018) but that certainly doesn’t stop it from being fun and enjoyable.
