It's amazing how a movie with so much talent involved, based on such an awesome and iconic character can miss the mark so badly. Everything, from the writing to the editing to the visual effects/design, even to some of the acting just didn't work.
Starting with the latter, Tom Hardy does his best, and when he has some genuine, non-contrived scenes he's actually pretty great. The guy's obviously a great actor, but he has to work with some mindbogglingly dumbly written scenes that even he can't save and he just ends up looking silly. The poor humor is in general one of the main reasons I ended up disliking this movie so much. They were going for some Deadpoolesque humor, but most of it just came off incredibly lame to me. I mainly laughed because of how bizar some of the creative decisions were rather than the humor itself. More even than in the action, this is where the PG-13 rating hurts the movie the most. If you're gonna make gruesome killing try to seem funny, you have to make the humor fit that narrative and you can't do that if you're restricted in what you're allowed to say and show.
It's also surprisingly light on action. It's a lot of Tom Hardy acting awkwardly in public and an ocassional CGI hand that slams some guy into a wall. There's one long motor chase scene which was used more as a set of jokes than a good action set piece, an obligatory climactic battle, and that's pretty much it. It was just not very fulfilling. The climactic scene is one huge CGI-fest between two creatures that did not look as good as they should have. It's not like the effects are terrible, but the designs of Venom and particularly Riot just are a little bland and uninteresting.
This weird input of action is a result of the film's poor pacing. It takes almost an hour for 'Venom' to actually Venom, and then it rushes the final act and all of a sudden it's over. Many superhero movies make the mistake of cramming in too many villains and plotlines and making the film unnecessarily lengthy and bloated, but 'Venom' takes it to the other extreme. It's incredibly light on story and way too short. Effectively clocking in at only 90 minutes, it should have take 15 to 30 more minutes to develop its storylines further. Particularly Riot as a villain needed more screen time, because he is just kinda suddenly there to give Venom another supernatural creature to fight against. I like the 'doing evil deeds for a good cause' direction they gave Riz Ahmed's character, and I think he's one of the better aspects of the movie, but that whole arc is ruined by Riot turning the story into a generic 'I'm evil and want to do evil things' trope.
The symbiotic relationship between Eddie Brock and Venom also could have benefitted from some more depth, particularly to establish why exactly Venom decided to be a good guy after all. Because as much as they were trying to paint Venom as some anti-hero throughout the build-up to this movie, he just ends up full hero at the end. He stops the evil symbiote from carrying out his plan and saves the world, and other than out of self-defense, almost only hurts clearly evil people. That may make him a little more vigilante than superhero, but still pretty much your typical good guy.
Finally, as a comparatively minor but still noticable issue, I also did not like the editing of this movie. Many of the transitions between scenes were really sudden, like when Eddie Brock is in the restaurant behaving erratically and the next moment he's having an MRI at the hospital. There are also some scenes that are ended rather abruptly, which I once again attribute to the PG-13 rating, since it's always when something supposedly violent was about to happen. In general, the poor editing really breaks up the flow of the movie, since it jumps around so much in time and space.
All in all, I was very disappointed by 'Venom'. All the ingredients of success were there, but Sony once again managed to mess it up somehow. It made a ton of money so undoubtedly there's gonna be a sequel, so I'll end on a positive note: with the obligatory origin story out of the way, it can only get better from here.
Starting with the latter, Tom Hardy does his best, and when he has some genuine, non-contrived scenes he's actually pretty great. The guy's obviously a great actor, but he has to work with some mindbogglingly dumbly written scenes that even he can't save and he just ends up looking silly. The poor humor is in general one of the main reasons I ended up disliking this movie so much. They were going for some Deadpoolesque humor, but most of it just came off incredibly lame to me. I mainly laughed because of how bizar some of the creative decisions were rather than the humor itself. More even than in the action, this is where the PG-13 rating hurts the movie the most. If you're gonna make gruesome killing try to seem funny, you have to make the humor fit that narrative and you can't do that if you're restricted in what you're allowed to say and show.
It's also surprisingly light on action. It's a lot of Tom Hardy acting awkwardly in public and an ocassional CGI hand that slams some guy into a wall. There's one long motor chase scene which was used more as a set of jokes than a good action set piece, an obligatory climactic battle, and that's pretty much it. It was just not very fulfilling. The climactic scene is one huge CGI-fest between two creatures that did not look as good as they should have. It's not like the effects are terrible, but the designs of Venom and particularly Riot just are a little bland and uninteresting.
This weird input of action is a result of the film's poor pacing. It takes almost an hour for 'Venom' to actually Venom, and then it rushes the final act and all of a sudden it's over. Many superhero movies make the mistake of cramming in too many villains and plotlines and making the film unnecessarily lengthy and bloated, but 'Venom' takes it to the other extreme. It's incredibly light on story and way too short. Effectively clocking in at only 90 minutes, it should have take 15 to 30 more minutes to develop its storylines further. Particularly Riot as a villain needed more screen time, because he is just kinda suddenly there to give Venom another supernatural creature to fight against. I like the 'doing evil deeds for a good cause' direction they gave Riz Ahmed's character, and I think he's one of the better aspects of the movie, but that whole arc is ruined by Riot turning the story into a generic 'I'm evil and want to do evil things' trope.
The symbiotic relationship between Eddie Brock and Venom also could have benefitted from some more depth, particularly to establish why exactly Venom decided to be a good guy after all. Because as much as they were trying to paint Venom as some anti-hero throughout the build-up to this movie, he just ends up full hero at the end. He stops the evil symbiote from carrying out his plan and saves the world, and other than out of self-defense, almost only hurts clearly evil people. That may make him a little more vigilante than superhero, but still pretty much your typical good guy.
Finally, as a comparatively minor but still noticable issue, I also did not like the editing of this movie. Many of the transitions between scenes were really sudden, like when Eddie Brock is in the restaurant behaving erratically and the next moment he's having an MRI at the hospital. There are also some scenes that are ended rather abruptly, which I once again attribute to the PG-13 rating, since it's always when something supposedly violent was about to happen. In general, the poor editing really breaks up the flow of the movie, since it jumps around so much in time and space.
All in all, I was very disappointed by 'Venom'. All the ingredients of success were there, but Sony once again managed to mess it up somehow. It made a ton of money so undoubtedly there's gonna be a sequel, so I'll end on a positive note: with the obligatory origin story out of the way, it can only get better from here.