Venom Movie Review: A Baffling Mess?

The second live-action adaptation of Marvel’s famous anti-hero, Venom, has been in theatres in China since November 9, and people have different viewpoints on it.

Venom is about an alien symbiote that crash lands on earth and finds its way to investigative reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy’s character). How did it get to earth, you ask? Well, thanks to the billionaire owner of a space research facility, Carlton Drake (Played by Riz Ahmed), who has pretty nonsensical ideas about how to save the human race by bonding symbiotes with humans and sending them into space. However, while experimenting with the relationship between man and symbiote, he ends up killing humans. When Eddie Brock breaks into Carlton Drake’s research facility to try to expose him, the symbiote called “Venom” goes into Eddie and decides to stay. The whole movie revolves around Eddie running around and attempting to understand his new “parasite” friend who protects him from the likes of Drake. Sounds pretty cool from the overview. However, after watching it myself, I too have many opinions.

Venom falls short not because of bad screenwriting or bad acting. It’s the fact that the mood is very inconsistent throughout the movie. Venom wanders between a dark movie and trying to be funny. Instead of being the R rated film audiences expected it to be, it turned out to be a big PG-13 mess. It feels as if Venom fails to stand as a movie on its own without the support of Marvel’s famous hero, Spiderman.

Josh H, a sophomore who reads comics and watched Venom last week, says, “Venom did a good job in making his appearance comic accurate. However, the movie did Venom’s personality very differently in a negative way. They made Venom an anti-hero similar to Deadpool when Venom is supposed to be the big villain against Spiderman. The movie changed my perspective of Venom by a lot.”

Ciro W, a sophomore who does not read comics, also watched Venom last week, and says, “Venom was a decent movie with an interesting idea for a story. However, the storyline and plot displayed on the big screen were too simple.”

Raymond W, another sophomore who does not read comics and watched Venom this week, says, “The Venom movie was funny and does a good job in connecting to the real world. However, the movie attempts to be funny at times when it shouldn’t, and fails miserably.

I often read comics and love Spiderman stories that include Venom, so in my opinion, Venom did a good job of displaying the character, and Tom Hardy did a great job portraying a frightened reporter that did not know what to do. However, the mood across the film is very erratic and strange with its out of place one-liners and cringy jokes. At the beginning of the film, the action was interesting and intense, but as the movie goes on, it seems to get too repetitive and gets a bit boring.

In conclusion, it seems as though Venom was a decent movie for people that don’t know who Venom is in the comics, but to comic book lovers, Venom was a terrible movie. Based on the interviews, Venom does a good job with its appearance of the character and has an interesting storyline without Spiderman. However, it fails to display the Venom character comic accurately, and has an inconsistent mood throughout the film.

Comment down below your thoughts on the Venom movie.