Venom: Let There Be Carnage

If I were to write that the Venom 2 was as uninteresting and unimaginative as the first one, I'd be bullshitting, because I don't remember anything from the first. But it's certainly uninteresting and uninspired. Tom Hardy's cool, so is Woody Harrelson. Michelle Williams and Naomie Harris are solid actresses, but they're given little space. In fact, everything has a little space. Venom isn't even a hundred minutes long, and unfortunately a good third of the running time is taken up by weird sitcom outtakes about Eddie Brock and Venom's cohabitation, where the film tries to pretend it's a variation on The Odd Couple, only with an alien. Occasionally, the film remembers that it has a serial killer and his symbiotic friend in there, so it skips to a random action scene and try to pretend to be horror. For an hour, nothing interesting actually happens except for Venom and Brock's arguments mixed with Harrelson's overacting (you can’t play a deranged serial killer in such a small space in any other way), only to end with a final clash with a lot of pretty solid visual effects and an unexpectedly solid length. And then the end. I won't remember any of it in a week. Again. (2021-10-13)

I don't even want to get too much into this movie because I'd feel like I was kicking a disabled person. It's actually fascinating to watch a $110M piece of work that seems like every other scene was being concocted while the previous one was being filmed. An Olympics of the laziest screenwriting ("the governor of California decided to bring back the death penalty in light of these crimes" what the fuck?!). Kelly Marcel's role in Hollywood is to be given potentially problematic topics and then muddle them up in a way that doesn't offend anyone while still trying to appear superficially non-conformist. I don't know if they have no one better at Sony to do that, or if they just can't completely colonize certain topics, but nothing here holds together at all. (2022-01-11)

The second Venom is more about digital monsters than about Hardy. Furthermore, they are two digimonsters that would look the same in a black-and-white movie. On the other hand, Venom “on his own two feet” is fun and his attendance of a party is one of the film’s best moments. The bad guys don’t arouse much fear, as their motivation is shoddy and their interactions with those around them come off as frivolous, like other things in the movie. In the final dark, overwrought digifest, I really didn’t give a damn who was throwing whom where or who was falling where or what was falling on them. Otherwise, Hardy on a motorcycle is great, and Michelle Williams... Michelle Williams! She gives the movie a much needed aesthetic element. If it wasn’t for her, I'd give Let There Be Carnage two stars. (2021-10-13)

After it’s release, I wondered what went so wrong that the first Venom was one of the best Marvel solo films and the second one is only 50%. The answer is simple: Andy Serkis, or proof that a different director will take the same movie into a completely different direction, and here everything is wrong. Venom's speeches are annoying cringe gibberish that will make 10 year olds laugh, the action is low, it doesn't pack a punch, the plot is practically unmoving from beginning to end, the villain and Carnage's character is brutally underused, it lacks more character portrayal (they could have played with the monster's lore and the killer's past...) and the finale isn't worth much. A watchable affair, unfortunately running at half throttle all the time and making it clear that it was made just for money and effect. Disappointing, like almost everything lately. Hopefully, at least Dune will surprise. (2021-10-17)

I was a bit apprehensive about this sequel, mostly worried it would follow the same formula as the first one — and it did, almost exactly. Once again, the whole movie revolves around Tom Hardy. Venom still leaves me unsure whether I’m supposed to root for him or not, and Woody Harrelson’s villainous role feels completely unnecessary. With the first film, at least I got a few laughs, but even the humor feels lacking this time around. And don’t get me started on the overly artificial CGI. It’s like a budget version of the Marvel universe, and it shows. (2022-03-02)