Venom was destined to be a train wreck form the start. A movie about a Spider-Man villain with no Spider-Man. Ha. The initial reviews were mostly negative. The movie wasn't sophisticated. There was too much comedy. People complained Tom Hardy was fat. The movie only scored 31% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's a good thing I love a train wreck movies.
Eddie Brock is obviously the major star of the film. The first hour or so follows Eddie as he proves to be a loser. He's a great reporter but gets fired after a bad interview with billionaire CEO Carlton Drake. Meanwhile Carlton Drake is trying to fuse alien symbiots with humans. In every test the symbiote bonds, before devouring the human's organs then rejecting it. Eddie is tipped off by one of the scientist. He goes to save her and gets fused with Venom. The rest of the movie is basically just Venom beating the crap out of people. Eddie making jokes while trying to reunite with Anne, an attorney and Eddie's ex-fiance.
The plot is really simple, there's a twist at the end that leads to the big fight with Venom seemingly sacrificing himself to save Eddie and the world. I really can't give you more. We see Eddie and Venom dispatch a few dozen attack teams. They make some great buddy cop jokes. At one point Eddie asks why Venom chose him and Venom explains it's because Eddie is a loser. Later there's a nice call back where Venom explains on his planet, he's a loser.
Let's just talk about the Eddie making out with Venom scene because I know it's on your mind. Anne was wearing the Venom symbiote. Kissing was the easiest way to transmit it back to Eddie. It wasn't some weird dream sequence. That probably could have been explained better but it wasn't. That's okay. There's a few other questions I have like, where's the missing symbiote? Why can Venom just bite people's heads off in public and nobody asks questions?
I think it was a good movie. It wasn't perfect but it's what you should expect from a Venom movie. There's plenty of violence, but minimum blood because it has to be PG. We do however see Venom bit off several heads. There's a scene where he catches a tear gas canister and crushes it. Stalking people from the darkness and killing them. All that good stuff.
I think where the movie shines is the comedy. It doesn't seem serious at all. There are moments when Eddie just seems flat out drunk. There are moments when Venom and Eddie argue about what they can and can not eat. The constant arguing about if Venom is a parasite or not kept me laughing. It's not just a bunch of shoved in one liners like the trailer would have you believe but it's mostly a comedy film when Venom isn't eating people.
A lot of people don't like that because they have this idea of Venom being some constant monster with only the goal of murdering Spider-Man. In reality, Venom can be pretty goofy a lot of the time. Especially the old comics and video games. Venom didn't become all monster all the time until Spider-Man 3 came out in theaters and people stuck with that as the definitive version.
Is the movie perfect? Not by a long shot. But, it does what it needed to do. There's plenty of action, a little horror and plenty of comedy. No, it isn't your standard hero movie, Venom isn't even a hero really. The whole lot is Venom just doesn't want to go home because he's a loser and if that means saving Earth he'll do it. They told us right up front with the tagline "There's already enough hero movies." I don't know what people expected, that left them upset. The budget was just over 100 million, most of that was used on making Venom look good, and it worked. The cast really only has maybe 7 characters with speaking roles. It wasn't going to be some super blockbuster, yet, it's destroying the box office. I got my money's worth. It might not be for everyone but Venom was for me.
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