Venom - The Movie

[troyness]

I'm not an informed Venom fan so forgive the newbie question but...

Why the Spider-man shaped eyes if it hasn't come in contact with Spider-man?

Is there a canon explanation or just wanna invoke the iconic look?

[kajnrig]

1 hour ago, troyness said:

I'm not an informed Venom fan so forgive the newbie question but...

Why the Spider-man shaped eyes if it hasn't come in contact with Spider-man?

Is there a canon explanation or just wanna invoke the iconic look?

That's not an invalid question. Venom's iconic look is entirely contingent upon it coming into contact with Spider-Man first thing upon crashing onto Earth. They've at least gotten rid of the spider tattoo across his chest and back, though.

[Tking22]

1 hour ago, troyness said:

I'm not an informed Venom fan so forgive the newbie question but...

Why the Spider-man shaped eyes if it hasn't come in contact with Spider-man?

Is there a canon explanation or just wanna invoke the iconic look?

Iconic look mostly. The Spidey symbols would have been a bit too coincidental, they're doing the "veins" thing on his chest instead, considering this movie Venom's origin isn't tied to Spider-Man at all. Whereas comic book Venom's origin has ALWAYS been tied to Spider-Man.

[troyness]

4 hours ago, kajnrig said:

That's not an invalid question. Venom's iconic look is entirely contingent upon it coming into contact with Spider-Man first thing upon crashing onto Earth. They've at least gotten rid of the spider tattoo across his chest and back, though.

 

3 hours ago, Tking22 said:

Iconic look mostly. The Spidey symbols would have been a bit too coincidental, they're doing the "veins" thing on his chest instead, considering this movie Venom's origin isn't tied to Spider-Man at all. Whereas comic book Venom's origin has ALWAYS been tied to Spider-Man.

At SDCC it was confirmed that there's no spider logo. I'll def check this movie out..but I've gotta feeling this movie's gonna bomb hard. The average movie goer has no idea who Venom is. The fans won't like spider-manless Venom. When Venom says "Eddie" I can't help but laugh my ass off.To me it just sounds so comedic. Let's hope it has an R-rating to keep the fans happy.

[Mommar]

What would have made a lot more sense is if they skipped over Eddie Brock to doing Flash Thompson Venom, except in this Spider-verse they screwed Flash up already, but then you could explain the look of the eyes and spider logo by the fact the symbiote sensed Flash was a huge Spider-Man fan and attempted to emulate the look for him.  Plus Flash was a far more interesting character in general.

[mikeszekely]

9 minutes ago, Mommar said:

What would have made a lot more sense is if they skipped over Eddie Brock to doing Flash Thompson Venom, except in this Spider-verse they screwed Flash up already, but then you could explain the look of the eyes and spider logo by the fact the symbiote sensed Flash was a huge Spider-Man fan and attempted to emulate the look for him.  Plus Flash was a far more interesting character in general.

Agree on all counts. When they took the symbiote away from Eddie I hated it, but I hated it more when they gave it back to him.

[Tking22]

Personally? I really liked Eddie as Anti-Venom. I'll also say that Agent Venom really saved the character for me, he was quite lame and one note for far too long, especially when bonded with that psycho Mac Gargan.

[troyness]

Although I didn't follow Eddie Brock/others. I did love Venom 2099!! That Venom seemed so brutal at the time....Omg do Sony own Spiderman 2099 solo film rights?... Please NO.

[seti88]

 

[kajnrig]

 

[jvmacross]

[TangledThorns]

Ugh. Tom Hardy deserves better than this. 

[no3Ljm]

 

 

[TangledThorns]

Reviews are already in and its as bad as we expected. I wonder if Tom Hardy will ever return to a comic book film after this.

[kajnrig]

3 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Reviews are already in and its as bad as we expected. I wonder if Tom Hardy will ever return to a comic book film after this.

If you believe the conspiracy theories, a lot of those "bad" "reviews" are Lady Gaga fans.

[mikeszekely]

4 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Reviews are already in and its as bad as we expected. I wonder if Tom Hardy will ever return to a comic book film after this.

I don't know, a lot of the bad reviews are from movie critics who aren't particularly familiar with the character. Other reviews by people who read comics are more favorable.

[no3Ljm]

That's really the problem nowadays when it comes to movies. People are so immersed with Social Medias and with what they 'follow', they always believe what they see and read instantly from them. Why not people just watch it and have a great time rather than skipping it just because some cool and hyped reviewers says it's not good? 

Oh well. 

 

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, no3Ljm said:

 Why not people just watch it and have a great time

This weekend, as soon as my buddy decides what night works for him.  

[Big s]

Most of the reviews describe the film as “a turd in the wind”, I think I’ll wait on this one.

[kajnrig]

Phew.

Don't watch this one.

Edit: sheesh the credits are stupid long for such a short movie, too. The second of two post-credits scenes is just a clip from the better-looking of the two Sony Spider-Man-related movies coming out this year, so at least that's something to look forward to, I guess... until it inevitably shows up on Youtube.

Edited October 5, 2018 by kajnrig

[Big s]

I still haven’t heard anything good about this one. A buddy at work that’s usually easy going about movies told me to save my cash.

[mikeszekely]

Just got back from seeing it.  My short take; it's not great, but it's not bad, either.  Of the movies I've seen in 2018 it's nowhere near Deadpool 2 or Infinity War, but I liked it better than Solo or Jurassic World.

My longer take is that of all the hosts to wear the Venom suit, Eddie Brock isn't particularly compelling.  He's best known for being more of a twisted mirror image of Spider-Man.  Despite becoming an anti-hero in the wake of Maximum Carnage, and despite appearing in a string of mini series throughout the late '90s, Eddie was always living in hovels and fighting off some weird threats that never established themselves into real villains you would associate with the character.  Eddie Brock Venom is a very one-note character.

In an overarching sense, I think the story was probably about as good as it was going to get, especially leaving Spider-Man out of it.  And it's not like they were pulling stuff out of the air, either.  The writers did their homework, and the story borrows elements from Lethal Protector, Planet of the Symbiotes, and a little Sinner Takes All.  But it's ultimately a fairly shallow story with forgettable antagonists.

In a more focused criticism, I think there was a problem with pacing, or maybe too much was left on the cutting room floor.  The beginning of the movie drags, and basically nothing interesting happens until Eddie bonds with the symbiote.  Once he does, it's interesting watching him figure out and comes to terms with what's happened, but then they pretty suddenly shift to "let's stop the bad guy," have a climatic final fight, roll credits.  To be fair, the film does provide some explanation for both Eddie and the symbiote's reasons for wanting to stop the bad guy, and they provide some motivation for the bad guy to do his thing, but maybe another act in the middle to flesh out those reasons and make it a little more personal would have helped, and they could have easily made up the time by expediting the movie's first act.

And yeah, the CGI is kind of bad for a movie released in 2018.

On the other hand, I think some of the criticism I'm hearing from some outlets is missing the point.  Like I hear pretty often that Venom should have been rated R, and played up more like a horror story.  Why?  I mean, yes, Eddie killed, but for all the threats he'd made to eat brains Eddie's Venom never actually did until 1996's The Hunger mini series.  And when he did, his exact words were, "No! Threatened it lots of times... never meant to... just to scare 'em- a joke...!"  He recognized that something was wrong with him, and it turned out to be a deficiency of phenethylamine... a deficiency he learned to correct by (I did you not) eating chocolate.  That's not to say that horror can't be used to tell a good Venom story (see John Carpenter-inspired 2003 story "Shiver"), but traditionally Venom hasn't been the sort of gory character people seem to think he should be.

Which leads me to the other complaint that I keep hearing... that the straight-faced Hardy is often funny, intentionally or not, and the result is too campy.  I'm guessing those people just haven't read much Venom.  I mean, this is a character that goes from violently suffocates a purse snatcher by forcing symbiote into his mouth and nose to politely introducing himself to the terrified victim, handing her back the purse, and patting her on the head before leaping away and declaring, "There's no need to thank us.  Your joy is reward enough and sends me leaping happily on my way."  This is a character who, in one issue, was singing David Bowie's "Let's Dance" while taking out a room full of mad scientists... at least until he forgets the lyrics and gets mad.  A character who teamed up with Wolverine to chase a shapeshifting rat through an interdimensional door.  I'd argue that making a Venom movie that wasn't campy would be like making a Deadpool movie and not having him break the 4th wall.

And on that note, I think Tom Hardy did a great job playing both Eddie and the symbiote, and the dialogue between the two is one of the film's real highlights.

So no, it's not a great movie.  It has its share of problems, some of their own making, some I think just coming with the source material.  But it is fairly true to the character, or as true as a Hollywood film was likely to get.  Casual fans may find less to enjoy than I did, but from the POV of someone like myself, someone who has quite possibly read every comic Venom has appeared in, I thought it was ok.  Aside from the slow start it kept me entertained, and I don't regret seeing it.

[Mommar]

15 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Just got back from seeing it.  My short take; it's not great, but it's not bad, either.  Of the movies I've seen in 2018 it's nowhere near Deadpool 2 or Infinity War, but I liked it better than Solo or Jurassic World.

My longer take is that of all the hosts to wear the Venom suit, Eddie Brock isn't particularly compelling.  He's best known for being more of a twisted mirror image of Spider-Man.  Despite becoming an anti-hero in the wake of Maximum Carnage, and despite appearing in a string of mini series throughout the late '90s, Eddie was always living in hovels and fighting off some weird threats that never established themselves into real villains you would associate with the character.  Eddie Brock Venom is a very one-note character.

In an overarching sense, I think the story was probably about as good as it was going to get, especially leaving Spider-Man out of it.  And it's not like they were pulling stuff out of the air, either.  The writers did their homework, and the story borrows elements from Lethal Protector, Planet of the Symbiotes, and a little Sinner Takes All.  But it's ultimately a fairly shallow story with forgettable antagonists.

In a more focused criticism, I think there was a problem with pacing, or maybe too much was left on the cutting room floor.  The beginning of the movie drags, and basically nothing interesting happens until Eddie bonds with the symbiote.  Once he does, it's interesting watching him figure out and comes to terms with what's happened, but then they pretty suddenly shift to "let's stop the bad guy," have a climatic final fight, roll credits.  To be fair, the film does provide some explanation for both Eddie and the symbiote's reasons for wanting to stop the bad guy, and they provide some motivation for the bad guy to do his thing, but maybe another act in the middle to flesh out those reasons and make it a little more personal would have helped, and they could have easily made up the time by expediting the movie's first act.

And yeah, the CGI is kind of bad for a movie released in 2018.

On the other hand, I think some of the criticism I'm hearing from some outlets is missing the point.  Like I hear pretty often that Venom should have been rated R, and played up more like a horror story.  Why?  I mean, yes, Eddie killed, but for all the threats he'd made to eat brains Eddie's Venom never actually did until 1996's The Hunger mini series.  And when he did, his exact words were, "No! Threatened it lots of times... never meant to... just to scare 'em- a joke...!"  He recognized that something was wrong with him, and it turned out to be a deficiency of phenethylamine... a deficiency he learned to correct by (I did you not) eating chocolate.  That's not to say that horror can't be used to tell a good Venom story (see John Carpenter-inspired 2003 story "Shiver"), but traditionally Venom hasn't been the sort of gory character people seem to think he should be.

Which leads me to the other complaint that I keep hearing... that the straight-faced Hardy is often funny, intentionally or not, and the result is too campy.  I'm guessing those people just haven't read much Venom.  I mean, this is a character that goes from violently suffocates a purse snatcher by forcing symbiote into his mouth and nose to politely introducing himself to the terrified victim, handing her back the purse, and patting her on the head before leaping away and declaring, "There's no need to thank us.  Your joy is reward enough and sends me leaping happily on my way."  This is a character who, in one issue, was singing David Bowie's "Let's Dance" while taking out a room full of mad scientists... at least until he forgets the lyrics and gets mad.  A character who teamed up with Wolverine to chase a shapeshifting rat through an interdimensional door.  I'd argue that making a Venom movie that wasn't campy would be like making a Deadpool movie and not having him break the 4th wall.

And on that note, I think Tom Hardy did a great job playing both Eddie and the symbiote, and the dialogue between the two is one of the film's real highlights.

So no, it's not a great movie.  It has its share of problems, some of their own making, some I think just coming with the source material.  But it is fairly true to the character, or as true as a Hollywood film was likely to get.  Casual fans may find less to enjoy than I did, but from the POV of someone like myself, someone who has quite possibly read every comic Venom has appeared in, I thought it was ok.  Aside from the slow start it kept me entertained, and I don't regret seeing it.

As someone at least as familiar with the character as you, you’ve sold me on it.  Sounds like Tom Hardy played the character as precisely as could be done.  Although based on your review here my idea they should have just skipped to Agent Venom still seems sound to me.  And a CGI budget.

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, Mommar said:

As someone at least as familiar with the character as you, you’ve sold me on it.  Sounds like Tom Hardy played the character as precisely as could be done.  Although based on your review here my idea they should have just skipped to Agent Venom still seems sound to me.  And a CGI budget.

Let us know what you think!

[Mommar]

On 10/6/2018 at 4:07 PM, mikeszekely said:

Let us know what you think!

It may be a long time before I do.  I don't usually have time to make it to movie theater anymore outside of the most giant of film releases.  And I have even less time during Balloon Fiesta season.

[renegadeleader1]

So Midnight's Edge shed a little light on why this film exists, and what they are planning to do with Spiderman once the Sony/MCU deal expires in 2019. Basically the Spidey actor Tom Holland is under contract to appear as Spiderman 6 times. Only 5 of those being under the MCU banner. The next will be under a Sony only controlled production. Sony doesn't like the fact they have zero control of the Spiderman character right now so they want to establish their own SpideyMCU with Venom then insert Tom Holland as Spiderman and pass their universe off as part of the Disney MCU in hopes of cashing in instead of letting Disney make the Spidey movies for them which they profit from despite having no creative control.

TLDR: The same idiots at Sony Pictures that screwed up two different versions of Spiderman want creative control back so they can screw it up a third time. Nevermind the fact they take 100% of the profits minus production costs for each solo film Disney makes for them as part of the MCU.

 

 

[kajnrig]

Went to see it a second time against my will (saw it with the nephews the first time, saw it with friends the second). It's not as bad the second time around, but only because it's easier to tune everything out and enjoy the at-times admittedly funny humor. The Venom symbiote is kind of an idiot, I'm glad they kept it like that instead of making it some sort of super edgy badass.

Eddie, though...

On 10/6/2018 at 12:24 AM, mikeszekely said:

My longer take is that of all the hosts to wear the Venom suit, Eddie Brock isn't particularly compelling.  He's best known for being more of a twisted mirror image of Spider-Man.

Basically this. On his own, he's just not very interesting. He also comes off as more of a shitty reporter than the accomplished one they want you to think he is, more of a tabloid paparazzo (apparently that's the singular of paparazzi) than a dedicated journalist. He doesn't fact-check, he doesn't gather evidence, he reaches bizarre and tenuous conclusions based on that evidence... I mean, I know that's not the point of the movie, but it really stuck out to me. Like, there was no reason he had to be an accomplished reporter. He could've easily been sold as the sloppy journalist that he is and it wouldn't have changed the thrust of the plot at all.

The "science" scenes were also extraordinarily bad. From the very first lines spoken by the Life Foundation doctors, you could tell that the writers had no idea how science is done. And this wouldn't be a problem except several key characters are at least partially defined by how well they science. To have them spouting lines like "The symbiote requires a respiratory host in order to survive in an oxygen-rich environment" (or some such thing) is... illusion-breaking.

What is a respiratory host, even? How do they know that it's the oxygen that's dangerous to symbiotes? There's more nitrogen in our atmosphere than oxygen. How does oxygen harm them? Would they survive if the oxygen was depleted, then? Wouldn't that mean they don't necessarily need a "respiratory host"? Wouldn't the exact opposite be true, in fact? If a host requires oxygen to breathe, and the symbiotes are adversely affected by oxygen (which, by the way, reads like a really dumb justification completely fabricated for the movie, I don't remember it ever being a thing in the comics/cartoons), wouldn't they expressly want to bond with something that DOESN'T breathe or otherwise takes in oxygen?

All of which is to reiterate that the scientific language is clearly and obviously written by people who had no idea what scientific language sounds like, and more importantly, couldn't be bothered to do the most basic research to find out. They added "weakness to O2" to the symbiote as a dumb justification for why it needs to bond with others, when 1) they didn't need to do so in the first place, and 2) THEY DIDN'T NEED TO DO SO IN THE FIRST PLACE. The writers actually already explained it away fine: In another scene (or maybe even in the same scene as "respiratory host" above), main baddie says that the symbiote bonds with others to better survive in unfamiliar territory. No mention of the atmosphere, much less oxygen specifically, AND he follows it up with "and hey, maybe we can use that very thing to survive in THEIR environment." And that's all you need right there. Don't over-explain it, just let that be the explanation.

...sigh. Anyway.

The pacing of the movie was... well, it wasn't half-bad, actually, up until they just randomly decide to skip to the ending. I'll echo @mikeszekely's sentiment that the beginning drags, but it's not too agonizing, and events do build on each other satisfyingly enough. But there definitely seems to be a good 30 or 40 minutes of footage that was cut from the middle there by men in business suits. Interestingly enough, Tom Hardy was vocal that his favorite 30 or 40 minutes of scenes were missing from the film. HmmmMMMMMMMMMMM COINCIDENCE I THINK NOT

(skipped straight to it for you)

 

The action, once the movie finally gets to it, is... it could be better, could definitely be worse. It doesn't excite the way a Marvel movie does, it doesn't make the most of the uniquely Venom traits the way Marvel did with... well, any and all of their characters, but let's use Spider-Man and Black Panther during their debut in Civil War specifically. And I know a lot of that has unfortunately to do with the fact that they don't have a Spider-Man to give Venom some 60% of this moveset. Speaking of movesets, I'd have loved to see some dumb Marvel VS Capcom moves show up. Venom Fangs, that completely fabricated for the game Death Bite super move... Any and all of that would have been great. They DO do something fairly clever in the final battle, but it's super brief and I couldn't even tell it happened until that second screening.

By the way, they completely screw up that final battle with a very obvious plot hole

Venom races up the rocket as it lifts off. A rocket makes a lot of noise during lift-off. Venom hates loud noises. Yet another sign that the writers and/or execs were lazy and bad at their jobs.

...but really, it's the pacing that ultimately dooms the movie. You can forgive subpar writing with subpar characters and mediocre action if they're fed to you at the right pace. But cut 30-40 minutes of interplay between Brock and the symbiote (side note: I also dislike that the symbiote itself calls itself Venom. Maybe this isn't the case nowadays or never was, but I always thought that "Venom" referred to the combined form of host + symbiote. It was why Venom referred to itself in the plural.), and the movie may as well not exist. What little bit of that there is is the absolute best part of the movie; cutting it doomed the movie (if not financially, then certainly critically).

On 10/6/2018 at 12:24 AM, mikeszekely said:

And it's not like they were pulling stuff out of the air, either.  The writers did their homework, and the story borrows elements from Lethal Protector, Planet of the Symbiotes, and a little Sinner Takes All.  But it's ultimately a fairly shallow story with forgettable antagonists.

I'll second this. I don't know nearly as much about Venom as you do, but I could tell they were at least trying to draw from source material. I'll reiterate that I love that the Venom symbiote is the loser of its own kind. I think that was taken from the comics, no? The sillier (and better) aspects of the movie almost certainly draw from the comics.

On 10/6/2018 at 12:24 AM, mikeszekely said:

 

Like I hear pretty often that Venom should have been rated R, and played up more like a horror story.  Why?  I mean, yes, Eddie killed, but for all the threats he'd made to eat brains Eddie's Venom never actually did until 1996's The Hunger mini series.  And when he did, his exact words were, "No! Threatened it lots of times... never meant to... just to scare 'em- a joke...!"  He recognized that something was wrong with him, and it turned out to be a deficiency of phenethylamine... a deficiency he learned to correct by (I did you not) eating chocolate.  That's not to say that horror can't be used to tell a good Venom story (see John Carpenter-inspired 2003 story "Shiver"), but traditionally Venom hasn't been the sort of gory character people seem to think he should be.

I feel like this could have made for a great R-rated horror comedy. The lack of gore doesn't get me so much as the lack of... follow-through, I guess. They don't do anything with the person-eating thing, it just feels like it's there to check off the list.

[sh9000]

 

[anime52k8]

I saw it last night and I really loved it. The Eddie-Venom relationship is the best. That is all.

[David Hingtgen]

Saw it Tuesday.  Generally agree with mikesz.  It’s not awful, it’s kinda campy fun.  If you like Venom, go see it.  A sequel with a whole lot more Eddie-Venom action could be pretty good thing. 

Kajnrig——they made it clear that it’s a certain (high) frequency range—-jet engine whine, speaker feedback etc.  “ending scene” noise is a much much lower pitch.  

Finally——my fave scene actually has Eddie and Anne.  More with her, please.  

[kajnrig]

42 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

Saw it Tuesday.  Generally agree with mikesz.  It’s not awful, it’s kinda campy fun.  If you like Venom, go see it.  A sequel with a whole lot more Eddie-Venom action could be pretty good thing. 

Kajnrig——they made it clear that it’s a certain (high) frequency range—-jet engine whine, speaker feedback etc.  “ending scene” noise is a much much lower pitch.  

Finally——my fave scene actually has Eddie and Anne.  More with her, please.  

But not two minutes earlier the start of the launch hurts the combined Venom/Whoever enough that they split apart... Or am I remembering that wrong?

[David Hingtgen]

I don't remember that sequence THAT well, if they were that inconsistent with what happens in that situation with two occurences just a minute or two apart...

[badboy00z]

I have a question and possible answer to that question. Lol

How do the Symbiotes know English?

Do they become instantly well versed in whatever language the host speaks because they bond to them? 

[Scyla]

3 hours ago, badboy00z said:

I have a question and possible answer to that question. Lol

How do the Symbiotes know English?

Do they become instantly well versed in whatever language the host speaks because they bond to them? 

The internet.

[mikeszekely]

3 hours ago, badboy00z said:

Do they become instantly well versed in whatever language the host speaks because they bond to them?

That's always been my assumption.  Well, maybe not instantly, but rather quickly as part of the bonding process.  Can't recall if there's any canon explanation one way or the other.