Ahh, Sony. Always one for jumping on bandwagons, yet always getting cold feet when doing them. You do love you Symbiotes don't you? Like I said at the end of the Amazing Spider-Man 2 review, I wanted Venom to fail. Not because it looked bad, because the trailers only looked unfinished, even to the point of showing scenes before the CGI was even implemented. The reason I wanted Venom to fail is that Sony has a habit of overdoing things when it comes to this style of movie making. Why just make one movie that might not be a success, but you can plan out the next 20 cause the character means it will be a success. Yes, that is the MCU formula now, however, there is still a set standard of quality, and with Sony, that quality isn't there. To use a gaming comparison, EA can make all the claims in the world that they're getting better, I'm not going to believe them until they show consistent quality. Excuse me if I sound bitter about this, but because this was a hit, I now have to keep an eye on a Kraven the Hunter movie, a character who I honestly question if anyone cares enough about to warrant a solo movie, but then again we are getting Dora the Tomb Raider and "Not The Killing Joke in live action", so what would I know?
Venom. Sony's third (does the original trilogy count?) attempt at a Spider-Man Cinematic Universe but this time with one twist, there is no Spider-Man here, at least at the moment. To those familiar with the source, you might be wondering why they did it. The real reason is to make money, though it's not as far fetched as some might believe. In modern comics, Eddie Brock and the Venom Symbiote have become more of an Anti-hero. The reason for this was due to a long-standing user of the Symbiote, Flash Thompson, who became the hero Agent Venom. The reason I bring this up is that it's good to know before going in that this is not faithful to Eddie Brock the villain, especially when you consider that there was a marketing push to make Venom look like the villain. In reality, this is more faithful to modern Eddie Brock, though still not a one for one transition.
 |
| Ok, maybe not overly faithful... Maybe Tom just wanted to have a scene when he's sitting in a Lobster tank? |
After an exploration into space nets the Life Foundation five Symbiotes, though two are killed over the course of the film, and the third is left in an ambiguous state of flux, Eddie Brock is given a chance to try and get information about the Foundations more... underhanded approaches to science. While the first time loses him his job and his fiance, the second time exposes him to the Venom Symbiote. After an attack to try and retrieve Venom is stopped, Eddie and Venom, after Venom finally reveals a plan (that would have been nice to know sooner than right before the final act cause there was no reason not to share it before then) that we see walking around bouncing from body to body with no real build up until it joins with the head of the Life Foundation turns out to be Riot, and the main villain of the movie.
 |
| The best Venom looks in this movie... |
Encase it wasn't obvious, I think this movie is sloppy, and it reeks of corporate meddling. It's clear that this movie was written to be longer, and cut down to as close to 90 minutes as possible to allow for more airings. I will admit though that I do appreciate the shorter run time cause there isn't any fat in this movie, just awkwardly handled scenes. There's one moment where Venom basically describes his weaknesses in order to set up the finale, but the problem is that there are several examples of one of them, sound, being used to fight Venom, and there was plenty of times fire could have been used as well. Stopping the movie to say "I'm weak to sound and fire" is lazy writing, and probably done as a result of the corporate mandated edits. While I'm grateful that the world building is limited to a few throwaway lines and the post-credits scene teasing Carnage, it doesn't excuse the fact that a movie marketed around a villain as a hero is in reality about just a hero with a slightly awkward way of handling villains, and people looking for a movie where the old Venom is being Venom are going to be disappointed. As a movie about the new Venom though? It's... ok?
 |
| Would you believe me if I said this was Venom? Because if you don't, then it's because you saw the movie. |
There are some things that I liked. I do enjoy the bond between human and symbiote, it's far more faithful to the comics compared to Spider-Man 3, and though the stunts are impressive to an extent, I hate the CGI in this movie. It's easy to tell what's real and what's fake here, with scenes awkwardly transitioning from one to the other, but the worst offender for the CGI is ironically the Symbiotes themselves. I hate how they look and how they move in this movie, they may look faithful to the comics, but faithful to the comics doesn't always make it look good in motion, especially in live action. The scenes with Venom, especially the final battle between Venom and Riot did make me feel a little motion sick, something that rarely happens when I watch a movie. So rarely in fact that I don't even remember the last time it happened when watching a movie. It was distracting to look at, so much so that I can't judge the choreography of the shots the Symbiotes are in, they look that bad. The best way I can describe how bad those two looked in that battle is that these to me are the same as many people's view on the Michael Bay Transformers designs. I never have a problem recognizing who's who in those movies (provided they give me something to work off like a name or a style convention), but in that battle I couldn't tell what goo was Venom and what goo was Riot. The worst offender of this was the floating head scenes. How did anyone think these were ok? Was this the best they could do on a rushed timeline? I wouldn't be surprised cause of how the trailers were done.
 |
| Seriously, what the heck is even happening here? What's Venom and what's Riot? |
Venom is a rushed, bland almost B movie quality film that got lucky. Normally, I would leave it at that because if this really was a B movie, a low budget movie that aims higher then it could achieve with it's budget, I'd be fine with it. The problem is though that this isn't that. This had money behind it, and this isn't supposed to be a stand-alone film, but one that kickstarts another cinematic universe that I know Sony will improve on, cause they haven't learned from the mistakes of the Amazing Spider-Man films. What makes it even more painful? Not that it'll keep Spider-Man from staying in the MCU, to be honest, I don't care about that in terms of the bigger picture. What hurts the most about this is that there is a movie that did learn from the mistakes of the past, and not only integrates world building effortlessly but is primed to be a far more interesting cinematic universe that could potentially be the answer to "how can we make a director-driven cinematic universe?". The problem? No one's going to care about it in comparison to a Venom 2, or a live-action Kraven movie, because of the style it took. Next week I cover that movie with Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, and come Sunday, the end of the Wolverine Trilogy with Logan. As for this movie, I hope it blows away, "like a turd in the wind", and please do not follow up on that teaser!
No comments:
Post a Comment