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After losing everything in an attempt to expose the criminal activities of genius industrialist Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), investigative journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) can’t quite let things go. He gets too close to one of the experiments, and ends up bonded to Venom, an alien symbiote/parasite with super-human abilities.
Despite having some knowledge of the Marvel universe outside current MCU incarnations, I was still genuinely surprised to hear that Fleischer’s Venom was coming in at a PG-13/15A rating. The anti-heroic character with cannibalistic tendencies and gross-out aesthetics seemed fitting for a more adult rating – and we’ve had adult-rated comics films prove that it can be done, and done well, think Deadpool or Logan. This lower-rating seems like a cynical grab for opening-weekend cash before word gets out about just how bad it is.
Eddie Brock is a self-involved figure, but a would-be revolutionary, who cares for the downtrodden and wants to get to the truth that privilege can hide. Venom is a violent alien creature with a penchant for violence and biting off heads. These two characters as sketched beg for a Jekyll and Hyde-esque conflict! Which doesn’t happen – possibly because director Ruben Fleischer’s Jekyll movie is still stuck in pre-production limbo, and he doesn’t want to use all his good ideas up in this nonsense? Instead, Venom and Eddie bond (physically and emotionally) almost instantly: they even make out at one point, when Venom has borrowed the body of Eddie’s ex – Michelle Williams in a paycheque role that comes nowhere near the sort of quality she brought to The Great Gatsby or My Week With Marilyn.
Riz Ahmed’s Drake is a monstrous figure – Elon Musk turning eugenics inside out, wanting to bond human life and alien symbiotes to ‘better’ both – and the script gives him very little to run with, preferring to focus on his grudge against Brock for daring to oppose him. There’s serious potential for terror and horror in both the anti-hero and villain, but the film would rather mug through attempts at Deadpool-esque humour by having Hardy essentially talk to himself as Brock and Venom. The low-growls of the amoral alien are less menacing than they are meme-able: my husband and I have already adopted ‘HUNGRY’ as an in-joke.
As a character, Venom is unpleasant to look at even in 2D illustration — all oozing, tar-like skin and that eerie tongue — and the 3D rendering of him in this film isn’t terrific. None of the effects are up to the standards we’ve seen lately. Several reviews I’ve seen note that this film, down to its Eminem title track, seems to have fallen through a crack in time from fifteen years ago when we expected less from comics movies. This year, however, gave us Black Panther, which may well end up as the first comics movie with an Oscar, and with Wakanda as the benchmark, Venom falls woefully short. But honestly, even if we were to use Batman vs Superman, Venom would fall short.
