Venom

Sony’s cinematic universe was one of the most laughed-at attempts of the formula in recent memory. While other studios have tried their hand at this overused gimmick to varying results, Sony has been the most consistently baffling, due to constructing a shared universe centred around their major superhero, Spider-Man, yet only making movies about his rogue’s gallery. Only being able to survive due to their joint agreement with Marvel, their individual films like Morbius, Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter are viewed as some of the worst superhero films of modern day, but in this sea of preposterous ideas and audience gaslighting, one section of this tattered spider web managed to cling to some level of success, that being the Venom trilogy, which just concluded in 2024. While not good movies and antithetical to the titular character’s identity, they were liked by some audiences and made enough money to not feel like a laughing stock, which probably gave Sony false hope, especially when they released the first film in 2018.

Investigative journalist Eddie Brock (played by Tom Hardy) is fired from his job after trying to expose the CEO of Life Foundation, Carlton Drake (played by Riz Ahmed) for inhuman practices, causing him to lose his apartment, credibility, and attorney girlfriend, Annie (played by Michelle Williams). Now a bum with no future, Eddie is contacted by one of Drake’s scientists, Dora Skirth (played by Jenny Slate) who tells him that Drake has been conducted human experiments with a strange alien lifeform that bonds with living hosts. After breaking into the laboratory to get evidence, Eddie is infected with one of these beings called Venom (also voiced by Hardy) who tells him about his species and their genocidal plans for the planet, with Drake planning to travel to their home world with his own symbiote, Riot (also voiced by Ahmed) to gather an army and see it done. Although initially not getting along, this new bond will need to be fleshed out in order for parasite and host to stop Drake and prevent Earth’s eradication.

Venom is not a very good movie and has practically nothing to do with the actual character in terms of tone, personality or storytelling, but against all odds, it proves to be one of the more harmlessly entertaining films within this scrambled universe.

Shockingly, Venom almost received a film before Spider-Man, with David S. Goyer writing a script in 1997 for New Line Cinema that would’ve featured Dolph Lundgren, but this project never moved forward, especially after Sony acquired the rights. Although Venom’s forceful injection in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 didn’t go over great with fans, Sony wanted to give the villain another shot and tried multiple different directors, actors and story ideas in the hopes that a film would come to fruition, but things never fully worked out until almost two decades had past and two Spider-Man film series had been cancelled. This new film was made with the assumption that it would connect with the recent MCU Spider-Man films and lead to a giant crossover confrontation, but a subtle cold war between Sony and Marvel prevented this from occurring, leaving one of the character’s best villains alone with no one to fight. This explains some of the poor decision making on the film’s part, but not the glaringly stupid ones that really took it in a radically different direction. When thinking about how a Venom movie would look, most would imagine something mentally torturous, gruesome, violent and scarring in a way that felt tragic and raw, like a monster movie with a superhero backdrop.  However, this movie doesn’t provide any adult, conflicting or nuance storytelling, instead opting for a cheesy, 90s-esque, buddy/buddy rom com that feels like any standard superhero film.

This was met with pretty harsh criticism from fans and critics, but this direction isn’t surprising as Sony was never going to make an R-rated movie about a character that was tied to their only strong money-ticket, and the people they choose to work on it are not capable of making anything twisted and complex. The director, Ruben Fleischer, was mainly know for creating the zombie comedy film, Zombieland (which is fun, but not comparable to what Venom should provide), the story creators and screenwriters, Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg and Kelly Marcel, all have their fair share of duds under their belt (Pinkner probably has it the worst with The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Fifth Wave and The Dark Tower back to back), and Sony just isn’t the studio to be dark and experimental with a character they could easily coast on (which did pay off as the film earned over $800 million). The directing is confused and all over the place, the script is atrocious and filled with cliched outcomes, predictable set pieces, and unfulfilling pay offs, the characters are all bland cartoons, the action gets worse with each passing act, and the story is beyond basic and pointlessly stretched to a two-hour running time.  With that said, it isn’t painful to witness like Sony’s later entries, the tone is wacky, but at least consistent, the characters are basic, but not unlikeable, and even though turning what should be a disturbed monster character into a quip-spewing goofball feels largely insulting, the 90s aesthetic and competent enough structure provides a ‘turn-your-brain-off” experience that can provide some entertainment when viewed in the right headspace.

It’s important to quickly come to terms that this movie is not going to attempt to replicate the true character of Venom, as if viewed with that lens, it’s one of the worst adaptations ever conceived, so it’s better to go with the ride they’ve created instead and judge it by the merits they established for themselves. As these characters go, they’re very basic archetypes and feel ripped right out of a super hero flick or even a rom com from the early 90s (which is strange considering it was made in 2018). Eddie Brock is not a tortured journalist pushed to the brink of madness who allows himself to be consumed by the symbiote in order to inflict extreme chaos, but rather a squeaky-voiced, constantly drunk-looking, washed-up soul who bickers with the symbiote like they’re a married couple, it just doesn’t work as strongly or as impactfully. They’re all terribly written and are saddled with truly awful lines and plot points, with the only thing keeping them above water is the talent portraying them. Almost everybody in this movie is above this material (Michelle Williams and Riz Ahmed are Oscar-nominated actors who shouldn’t have to stoop this low), but because of that, they make what should easily be garbage characters more tolerable.

Smaller roles from people like Jenny Slate, Melora Walters, Peggy Lu, Scott Haze and Reid Scott get across a sense of personality, mostly silent miscellaneous parts from people like Michelle Lee and Emilio Rivera are shockingly effective in their brief instances, Michelle Williams plays a generic love interest who has no real purpose, but can occasionally have a solid funny reaction that makes her involvement feel worth it, Riz Ahmed plays a frustrating stock CEO bad guy, but has enough acting capabilities to make these terrible lines feel passable, and Tom Hardy as Eddie and Venom is a strange situation. Hardy is an actor who mostly does whatever he wants regardless of whether it benefits the movie or the character he’s playing, and even though his acting in this is confusing and so over-the-top comedic, it at least provides a sense of character on an otherwise basic lead. Venom has a lot of things going for him; his design looks pretty good, the effects on him are decent, the voice matches pretty well, and how his powers work both on and off of Eddie are clever and inventive, but the character is like a Looney Tunes character that forgot he was supposed to be scary, it’s legitimately pretty lame.

Much like how the actors feel too good for such a useless script and story, the technical creatives behind this film also seem too high calibre for this kind of material. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique, editors Maryann Brandon and Alan Baumgarten, and composer Ludwig Göransson are all Oscar-nominated talent who have been attached to big successful movies, so it feels like the lesser quality of these components isn’t a fault with them, but rather how they were led and used. On their own, some of these components wouldn’t look terrible, like some of the shot composition and editing can look like nice and clean, but the movie very rarely gets those moments, and it’s saddled with a very ugly, dreary color palette that makes this entire world like washed-up, grey and lifeless. It limits the kind of unique visuals you can get in this world outside of from the perspective of the titular character, and even then, this is something that also degrades with time. The first few action set pieces are handled pretty well; they have good camerawork, are edited appropriately, have decent choreography, there’s a nice mix of practical and digital effects, and the unique way Venom fights is cool to witness, but when the film reaches its end, it just falls on its face, with cramped camera work, overly choppy editing, and too much visual clutter and a hazy filter to make any of it look nice or appealing. The score is mostly miscellaneous and unmemorable (outside of a Venom-themed rap song during the credits by Eminem, which is another staple element of a superhero flick from the 90s), but otherwise, it just feels like a lot of wasted potential.

Venom had so much potential, but if Sony couldn’t even provide an authentic portrayal when he was a villain in a proper Spider-Man movie, there was no chance he would be treated any better as the studio’s sloppy second option for a lead in their haphazard universe. Despite how this movie fails on multiple fronts, it can say that outside of the Into the Spider-Verse movies (it feels insulting to even compare it with this), they are the most watchable and successful non-Spider-Man film, but it seems that people view them more as harmless junk food and guilty pleasures rather than actual good films. The writing is terrible, the characters aren’t handled correctly, the action and visuals progressively get worse, and even though the film has a naïve and harmless nature about it and is fun when viewed in the right mindset, that doesn’t equal out to a proper Venom adaptation. If you’re looking for a movie that plays with the themes and spirit of the character in a more faithful and mature sense, the 2018 sci-fi horror film, Upgrade, is better suited (it also has its fair share of faults, but it’s better than this), but otherwise, this movie doesn’t have the bite it requires.