Review: VENOM – A Turd in the Wind
Sony thought it was a good idea to make a Spider-Man world without Spider-Man. That philosophy is terribly flawed. But here at WOBAM Entertainment, we were willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. As Sony hoped to create their own MCU separate from Disney, they pushed forward with Venom. What is this jumbled mess? Is it worth seeing? I’m going to break it all down with some minor spoilers. So, if you don’t want to know anything now is your queue to leave. But if you fancy, we do have a Spider-Man podcast linked below. And feel free to check out more of our 7 Days of Venom here.
If you want to keep reading, let’s talk about Venom.
The film starts off with Eddie Brock, played by Tom Hardy, a reporter for a network. The network is never named, only referred to as The Network, which was odd. Anyways, Brock investigates this shady company called the Life Foundation own by Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), which is experimenting on an alien symbiote. Their goal is to create the ultimate human. Our world is wasting away and we’ll have to move on to the stars. Drake begins human testing and kills people with no remorse. Brock wants to expose Drake’s company and uses his girlfriend (Michelle Williams), to get the info he needs. This causes her to lose her job, leading to a rift between her and Eddie. The aftermath is tough on Eddie. Leading to him having a downward spiral. He loses everything and is on the brink of giving up on life. Through Dora Skirth (Jenny Slate), Eddie decides to take down the Life Foundation (again), but then he gets infected by the Venom symbiote.
That’s our movie. Eddie and Venom need to stop the Drake from launching a rocket into space before it calls more symbiotes to earth. Ending with a battle between Venom and Riot (another symbiote). The characters in this movie aren’t real characters. They don’t have any real motivations and they’re all horrible people. Eddie is a terrible person, he takes advantage of the ones close to him to get what he wants. It’s never explained why. Where did he get the info to begin with? Why does he want to bring them down? Is it because he’s a good person? We don’t know! The symbiote is a character in its own right and his motives are just as bad as everyone else. He wants to help Eddie simply because he is a loser on his own world. That’s literally a line in the movie. The film goes for this weird PG-13 horror vibe and it just doesn’t work. No one has a purpose. No one has any personality. It just exists for the sake of making money off of the Spider-Man property.
Venom is a character who was created to serve as a mirror to Spider-Man. In the film, he’s still that, but it doesn’t work without Spider-Man. There were moments where Venom is just straight up evil and you want Spider-Man to save the day. That moment never has a payoff. Venom is a movie that is lacking a hero. It’s lacking a soul.
Venom is a disaster if you wanted a good comic book movie. It does have some great comedic moments but I honestly can’t tell if that was the intent. I say skip this one until it’s on Netflix. There are three more Spider-Man movies coming out within the next year. Hopefully, they fair better.
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