"Venom" Review | The Shackles of Corporate Mediocrity
Venom feels more like a product than a film. While the film isn’t bad, it also struggles to find any kind of identity to make it stand out from the sea of superhero films. Through a safe and less-than-impressive screenplay and weak performances, this year’s Venom won’t leave much of an impact on anyone that sees it. // Image: Sony Pictures
2018 has been a surprisingly below-average year for comic-book-to-film adaptations. Aside from The Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2, this year has has seen either unremarkable or underwhelming superhero films. With most of the year done and dusted, only two big comic book films remain for the last quarter of this year: one being the upcoming Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and the recently released Venom - both coming from Sony.
While Into the Spider-Verse has had a lot of positive buzz surrounding it, the same couldn’t be said for Venom leading up to its release, with many fans worrying that the trailer’s generic action movie tone would bleed into the entire film itself. But hey - trailers should never be indicative of a final film’s quality, so I walked into Venom with an open mind, hoping to enjoy what it had to offer.
To provide some context, fans of Venom have been waiting for a dedicated film adaptation for a long time. While the character made an appearance in the oft-disliked (though I would also add the term “underappreciated”) Spider-Man 3, the Venom property, arguably one of Marvel’s most popular properties and certainly their most popular antihero, lacked a dedicated film adaptation. This wasn’t due to lack of trying on Sony’s part, as Venom went off and on development for nearly twenty years.
But at last, Venom is here. As a moviegoer that has limited knowledge about the Venom property, I was cautiously optimistic when walking into the theater. Unfortunately, my optimism was greeted with a film that feels ostensibly corporate and mediocre. While the film has serviceable talent on board, the unfortunate reality is that Venom, through all of its development troubles, ended up as an ultimately forgettable, bland, and tonally confused film that that makes the film difficult to recommend.
More so than other superhero films we’ve seen the last decade or so, Venom’s greatest struggle is its formulaic structure. The film begins with us having a taste of Eddie Brock (portrayed by Tom Hardy) and his life before it inevitably crumbles due to his own greed. In the aftermath, we become familiar with how his life changes until circumstances allow for him to come across the symbiote, allowing Brock to achieve symbiosis with the titular character. What follows is Brock learning to live alongside Venom, in addition to coming at odds against Carlton Drake, a CEO that’s hell-bent on using the symbiote to create a better, if more dangerous society.
What makes this plot so formulaic is its “character origin syndrome”. Like many superhero films in the ‘90s, 2000s, and early 2010s, Venom is primarily concerned with having the character’s origins be the centralized focus of the film. However, from the perspective of a non-fan of the comics, one of the most intriguing aspects of the Venom property is seeing the camaraderie of differing morals and personalities between Eddie Brock and Venom and how one character influences and affects the other. While this dynamic is slightly touched upon in the film, it takes a backseat in the grand scheme of the character origin plot, which is incredibly underwhelming.
We see glimpses of Brock fighting against Venom’s voice nagging at him throughout the film. We see them fighting over who is taking control over Brock’s actions, but there are ultimately ideas that are only toyed with, rather than fully implemented into the film’s storytelling. So not only do we have limited time to see Brock and Venom together due to the film’s lengthy devotion to describing Brock’s origin story, but when we do see Brock and Venom together, we don’t see them interact too often, which brings this film’s purpose of even existing into question.
The structure of the character origin story in this film feels noticeably dated. We see such a strict following of the traditional hero’s journey arc that the film doesn’t have a chance to do anything unique, preventing Venom from attaining any kind of identity to stand out from other comic-book-to-film adaptations. However, Venom also suffers from a stronger, far more catastrophic issue - its tonal confusion.
Sometimes, Venom wants to be a fun, over-the-top, somewhat corny superhero action movie. Other times, Venom wants to be a gritty, dark, Dark Knight-esque exploration of Eddie Brock and his symbiotic counterpart. Rather than picking one of these two tones, or even switching between the two, Venom awkwardly attempts to do both at the same time, making for a cinematic experience that feels disjointed and clumsy. We’ll see an attempt at realistic action sequences, but then we’ll hear corny dialogue that wouldn’t feel out of place in The Avengers. In the screening I attended, there were instances of laughter in parts of the film where humor wasn’t intended. Many people I saw the film with were laughing in disbelief, and when that happens, a film has failed at immersing an audience.
This tonal confusion bleeds into the performances in the film. I’ve enjoyed the few performances I’ve seen from Tom Hardy, but here, he’s simply given nothing to work with. This film’s screenplay doesn’t do an effective job of illustrating Eddie Brock as a character. Sometimes, the film wants to see him as goofy, and other times, the film wants us to see him as a person that has experienced tragedy and turmoil. The problem is, like with the confused tonality throughout the film, the screenplay doesn’t decide and tries to accomplish both aspects of this character. The result of this causes me - someone that’s not familiar with Venom as a property (which is a sizable demographic for the audience that will see this movie) - to not truly understand Brock as a character, which is a huge issue for character-driven drama.
Additionally, Riz Ahmed, while I loved his performance in Nightcrawler, fails to impress here. Not only is his character written very poorly - being a blatantly evil person with a god complex just for the sake of being an over-the-top villain -, but Ahmed simply doesn’t deliver the villainous, foreboding presence that’s needed in a role like this. While I feel that both Hardy and Ahmed do the best with what they’re given, the writing for both the protagonist and antagonist of this film leaves a lot to be desired.
This is nothing to say of the titular character, who we oddly don’t see a lot of in the film. As stated earlier, Venom doesn’t come into the picture until after Eddie Brock’s character is established, making Venom not appear until roughly the halfway point of the film. However, like with Brock, it’s hard to identify what Venom’s character in this film’s universe should be due to the screenplay doing a poor job of giving us dialogue and scenarios that clearly paint who he is. When I can’t imagine what the titular character and/or protagonist would do in a certain situation, then a film’s screenplay has failed its job of informing its audience about its characters.
Additionally, the action sequences of the film feel very safe and understated. While the fight choreography is about as average as you’d expect for a film like this, the aspect that drags Venom’s action scenes down is that they all occur at night. This makes Venom, an entirely black character, very difficult to see. As a side note, I’m not sure I’m a fan of Venom’s design. Compared to other representations I’ve seen of him in other media, his design here feels overdone (and truthfully, his teeth just distracted me whenever he was onscreen).
Lastly, let’s talk about the controversial PG-13 rating for this film. Many Venom fans anticipated this to be an R-rated film. Especially given the recent success of Fox’s efforts with Deadpool and Logan - both having R-ratings -, it made sense for Sony to be comfortable with giving the go-ahead for this film’s R-rating. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and this film ends up struggling as a result. As a character, Venom carries gruesome violence and moral ambiguity – both of which can be tackled and expressed more vividly with an R-rating. This film’s PG-13 rating forces the film to essentially hold its punches. Venom’s brutality in the film is contrasted with the lack of any display of the devastation and deaths caused by his violence.
Overall, Venom’s greatest crime is that there’s simply not much to talk about. It’s an underwhelming, unremarkable, average movie that feels way too safe for its own good. It overindulges in providing a character origin story, which gives us very limited time to experience what people love about Venom – the central conflict between Eddie Brock and Venom. With a screenplay that feels awkward and tonally confused, performances that either feel miscast or missing strong characterization, and a structure that feels both formulaic and dated, Venom is a corporate, mediocre mess. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not good. Given the plethora of comic-book-to-film adaptations we’ve seen this decade, there are many, many better ways to spend your time if you’re looking for an enjoyable comic book adaptation.
Final Grade: D
Thanks for reading! What did you think of Venom? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think!
