Successfully bringing a comic book to the big screen is difficult in a number of ways. Aside from the many technical challenges, filmmakers need to pay enough respect to the source material in order to not piss off the fanbase while still broadening the appeal enough to make the project successful financially. And it’s usually not a good omen when the lead actor openly says all his favorite scenes (about a half hour) ended up on the cutting room floor. Remember when Fantastic Four Director, Josh Trank, came out and trashed his own film for similar reasons, it went on to be a complete laughing stock that was eviscerated by fans and critics alike. That may still end up being the case with Venom but there’s an undeniable entertainment factor that goes a long way.
I should preface this by saying Venom is my favorite of the Spider-man villains and I have the first issue of Lethal Protector, in which Eddie Brock is the main character for the first time and we see his transformation from villain to anti-hero and this new film is loosely based on that comic. Sam Raimi attempted to bring the Symbiote in the fold during the third film in his wall-crawler trilogy, and actually started in the right place, but that story needs its own trilogy and jamming the character into an already crowded film resulted in a widely panned film. Two Andrew Garfield offerings later and again no Venom. With the friendly neighborhood web-slinger currently making the rounds in the MCU, Sony decided to go ahead and capitalize on the character rights while they still had the chance. Unfortunately, a sizeable part of Venom’s legacy is directly tied to his relationship with Spider-man and introducing the character in this way robbed the audience of that entire growth arc…and a really fantastic story as well. If you’re willing to overlook that aspect, the movie can still be enjoyable…maybe even more so for those moviegoers unfamiliar with the connection.
Screenwriters Scott Rosenberg, Jeff Pinker, Kelly Marcel and Will Beall had a tough task bridging the gap between the comic and the film, but they actually did a very good job picking the key elements from the source material and coming up with a solid enough backstory for where the Symbiotes came from and why they are here. After that it’s a bit shaky and, sadly, they didn’t seem to place the same level of emphasis on the rest of the story, like how Eddie gets involved. The dialogue leaves a lot to be desired as well, but it works with the primary characters enough to forgive the fact that it doesn’t really work with anyone else. Their biggest win was developing the personality for the Venom Symbiote, who is surprisingly funny and intuitive. It’s really all kind of messy, but I was anticipating much worse.
Tom Hardy may have had his favorite stuff left out of the final cut, but there was still plenty to go around during the nearly two-hour runtime. Watching him be inhabited by and bond with the Symbiote is a lot of fun and demanded a lot from him physically. While Hardy is a very talented actor, he didn’t make for a very convincing reporter let alone the best investigative journalist in the business…due in large part to those aforementioned script deficiencies. The dialogue painted him as kind of a “dumbass” which his boss literally calls him. In casting Hardy, Sony committed to trying to franchise the character and, if nothing else, watching them interact could be entertaining a second time around.
Regrettably, Hardy and Michelle Williams had next-to-no chemistry. Williams is a talented actress as well, so it was even more disappointing. Speaking of disappointment, her wig was a big, noticeable mistake. I don’t judge her choice to wear a short hairstyle in her personal life but clearly, the filmmakers who hire her don’t agree. There’s no need for it here and the studio can’t really claim artistic integrity since Anne has relatively short hair in the comics. The wig brought nothing to the character besides distraction and they need to accept that the length of her hair isn’t relevant to the character. Ultimately, it didn’t matter much either way since she and Eddie don’t really have any significant, meaningful dialogue with one another. We may see her again depending on where the studio wants to go with this.
On a bright note, Riz Ahmed was excellent as the smarmy, arrogant billionaire Carlton Drake but became just another thing when he got his own symbiote. You can see it in the trailer plain as day, so the audience doesn’t even get the surprise factor. Additionally, it’s a familiar crutch that many superhero films (Black Panther, Iron Man, Superman, etc…) have used where the villain is essentially a mirror image of the hero and the final conflict just devolves into CGI mayhem. Things were working just fine with Drake sending his arsenal of goons and tech weaponry after Brock without needing that extra push. Both Ahmed and the audience got cheated out of the Brock/Drake rivalry that was being built well up until that point.
Putting all that aside, the interpretation of the Symbiotes themselves were spot on with how I imagined them and watching them interact with the physical world showed that the filmmakers did an excellent job studying the source material. The team of artists and visual effects engineers who designed and animated the creatures did an amazing job and I hope that doesn’t get lost in the sea of negative reviews surrounding the film.
This wasn’t nearly as bad as critics were saying. I’m glad I got advanced tickets to IMAX and, granted opening Thursday is full of hardcore fans, the crowd response was good. The humor landed and worked well in conjunction with the action. Alan Baumgarten and Maryann Brandon really chopped this up in the editing room. The whole Eddie Brock introduction was really odd and was almost a highlight reel and the final conflict was dark and all over the place. In fact, the entire third act starts to get away from the most effective elements of the film but I would be extremely interested in seeing a director’s cut from Ruben Fleischer that includes that additional 30-minutes. This was a pretty dark movie at times but wisely balanced with humor, and I’m curious if the stuff that didn’t make the cut altered the course from PG13 to R.
Recommendation: If you’re a Marvel fan, then this is a no-brainer. Critics like to hate things but, while this may be something of a messy final product, I’ve seen much worse. I went in with very low expectations after hearing nothing positive and was pleasantly surprised.