Tom Hardy’s Venom set out to do two things; 1, redeem the character’s image from its less than stellar debut in Spiderman 3, and 2, kick-start a stand-alone antihero franchise that many never thought would work except for a movie like Deadpool, whose acceptance came from being linked with the X-Men and Deadpool being Deadpool.
With Venom currently showing in the cinemas, here is an objective review of Sony’s attempt of the Spiderman spinoff.
SPOILER WARNING: IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED VENOM YET, CHECK OUT EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE WATCHING VENOM INSTEAD COS THERE WILL BE A FEW SPOILERS BELOW.
THE GOOD
Tom Hardy’s casting as Eddie Brock/Venom is one of the best castings since Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. He effortlessly played the role of Venom (which may have been largely due to earlier acting in a somewhat similar role earlier this year in Upgrade), and he gave us a new take on the character that we haven’t seen much of in both comics and cartoons. The dialogue between Eddie and the venom symbiote was really hilarious and something that we would definitely want to see more of in future, especially when Carnage comes in the sequel.
Riz Ahmed played the villain very smoothly. With the progression of the story, you wouldn’t believe he was really the villain until the Riot symbiote infected him, even though he was making some very questionable decisions, it wasn’t until the end we realized just how terrifying of a villain he was even without the symbiote in him. And it is a testament to how awesome the script and story was.
The CGI was amazing, making Venom and Riot look more liquid than gooey (comparing it to Venom in Spiderman 3 and also the cartoons and comics) was a really good decision because it made them more realistic and formidable without using their weapons and other abilities.
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Venom’s origin story, the overall plot, the action, sounds and everything that we initially feared would go wrong in the movie went as right as rain and it is definitely among the best origin stories in the superhero cinematic universes.
THE BAD
Venom movie didn’t do right by the source materials in terms of going from comics to the big screen. In the movie, Riot wasn’t an offspring of Venom (which was totally okay), but the major bad were the other offsprings like Scream, Hybrid, and others whose symbiotes were shown (we are taking a wild guess based on the colours of the symbiotes) but all died. Even though Carnage is the most popular villain of Venom and will get his debut in the sequel, there are a lot of things they could have done with Scream and her brothers and sisters instead of killing them off (if they did kill them off).
THE UGLY
The action scenes between Venom and Riot were too scattered and shabbily done. The action scenes were barely visible, so much so, that I had to imagine what was happening instead of seeing what was happening. It was just as bad as the fight between Optimus Prime and Megatron in the first Transformers. Maybe it was because the fight was done in a very narrow environment, but the final fight was a really bad ugly to what would have been a perfect origin story.
Asides from the fight, Venom is a must-see movie, ones that you will definitely enjoy and be super hyped about.
Score – 7/10
Venom is currently showing in cinemas nationwide