I am surprised that a movie based on the Marvel Comics character Venom ever got made. It seems like ever since the release of Spider-Man 3 more than a decade ago where Venom played a part there was talk of a movie featuring that character and even more recently with the Andrew Garfield version of Spider-Man there were rumors of a Venom spin-off movie then too. But over the years nothing ever happened and quite frankly I didn’t think anything was going to happen so I was kind’a surprised when this modern Venom movie was announced a few years back.
Venom opened late 2018 and was trashed by critics but it made a lot of money at the box office. Still, it took me until recently to checkout the movie on home media and honestly I think that was for the best. Venom does have its moments but for a relatively short superhero movie it drags in places and is kind’a boring.
Here, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is a crusading investigative journalist who because he asks the hard questions is fired from his job and loses his fiancé. The hard questions he was asking were to Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), a tech billionaire who while exploring the stars brought back a ship full of alien “symbiotes” that need to bond with a human host in order to survive our environment. Drake sees these symbiotes as a way to be able to survive things like climate change, but the symbiotes pretty much just want to eat us. That is except for the one called “Venom” who bonds with Brock and while it still needs to eat people in order to survive, agrees to only eat bad people and help Brock do good like stop Drake and his symbiote alien conquest.
I felt this when I heard about Venom and feel it still, but to me Venom and Eddie Brock are need to be the bad guys, but in Venom they’re mostly good. In the comics the Venom symbiote was the black Spider-Man costume for a long while, that’s why Venom has the spider-designed costume and shoots webs like Spidey. And after Spider-Man got rid of the symbiote, it found and bonded with Brock and became the anti-Spider-Man character Venom. Venom is one of the classic Spider-Man villains but the movies have changed him to a mostly good-guy and it’s just weird.
Why does Venom look like a spider and shoot webs like Spider-Man in Venom? Well, that’s never really explained. Why does Venom look monstrous? Well, that’s because the symbiotes look monstrous I guess.
All of which I could overlook if the story of Venom weren’t so by-the-numbers dull. It doesn’t help matters that the first hour of Venom is Venom-less and the big fight scene at the end of the movie, all superhero movies have a big fight scene at the end of the movie, is Venom against, essentially, another Venom.
But like I said this movie made bank at the box office and there’s already talk of another Venom in the works. Will that movie be as boring as this one? Only time will tell.
