Venom (2018)

[IRONicmerMAN 391]

I'm a Venom fan.  I'm a Tom Hardy fan.  I had high hopes.  Then I saw Sony was in charge and knew this would be doomed.  Also, they should have gone for an R rating like Logan and Deadpool.  I've seen this movie called pretty good, a complete disaster, and unintentionally funny.  It sounds like madness.

The caliber of people involved with this film is astounding...Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Ruben Fleischer (director), Scott Rosenberg (writer).

One of my favorite quotes I've seen about the film: "Matt Patches pointed out that Hardy might be the only person in the movie who knows it's a comedy and responds accordingly."

Unintentionally hilarious: https://www.thedailybeast.com/tom-hardys-venom-is-an-unintentionally-hilarious-disaster

"An absurdly sloppy comic-book extravaganza about a noggin-chomping villain who becomes something of a hero, Venom is like its title character: so unbelievably bad it’s almost good. Almost."

"Despite Hardy’s over-the-top tour de force, Venom can’t keep from embarrassing itself at every turn."

Tom Hardy performance: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/10/venom-movie-review-tom-hardy

"His accent is all over the place, and you fear for his physical well-being at times. I suppose that tracks; he’s got an alien entity wriggling around inside him, after all. The character, I mean. Hardy the actor doesn’t have some otherworldly being tugging on his brain. At least, I don’t think so."

"For several weird stretches, though, Venom is a bouncy good time. The movie doesn’t seem to care if you’re laughing with it, at it, or whatever."

A total mess: https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/venom-movie-review-tom-hardy-729583/

"In the first scene of Marvel’s utterly unmarvelous Venom, an alien space ship crashes and burns on earth leaving behind a slithering mass of defanged, digitalized slop. That’s also a fair description of this puddle of simplistic, sanitized PG-13 drivel that Marvel has released instead of the scary, dark-night-of-the-soul thunderbolt fans had the right to expect."

"What went wrong? Everything, actually. Crudely directed by  Ruben Fleischer (remember the bliss of Zombieland?) from an aggressively blockheaded script by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg and Kelly Marcel, this super–antihero tale seems to take a twisted pride in missing the point."

Future cult classic? https://www.wired.com/story/venom-movie-review/

"THIS IS A list of things that happen in the new movie Venom: Riz Ahmed, personifying every rich supervillain trope at once, utters the words "God has abandoned us … I will not"; Tom Hardy hops in a restaurant's lobster tank and eats a crustacean raw; the movie's titular character says "on my planet, I was kind of a loser"; and an alien turns into Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams. These are the kinds of moments that turn a movie into a cult favorite, or into a total disaster. Venom could be either—if it had any idea what it was at all."

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

It's a shame, I know the logistics of including Spiderman in the movie even in a cameo capacity could be a pain in the ass to arrange but I think it really would have helped this movie. 

Tom Hardy has also said that they cut significant portions out of the movie, and the material removed were some of his favorite scenes he shot. I can only imagine that they more than likely lost some fun scenes of Hardy interacting with the venom symbiote. 

[RyanSz 3140]

I too am a Venom fan and will be seeing this sometime this weekend, but I don't have high expectations. I was given a reason to feel Sony bungled this when it appeared that they were mixing two different Venom hosts, Eddie Brock and Flash Thompson, as they have Eddie trying to make the symbiote a benevolent entity, which was the whole gimmick of the Thompson run. I know that the recent series where Brock gets the symbiote back is somewhat along these lines, but not to the extent they are trying to make, because Brock has almost always been a bad dude in the comics. Also, I fucking hate the internet in that the movie just only came out today and every article in one way or another spoils the end credit cameo, one on Yahoo even NAMING THE CHARACTER/ACTOR who appears in the title. I also hate how they pronounce symbiote in the trailers which seems like a runner in the film, just cringy and wrong.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

I'm going to see it this weekend too, I've heard it compared to Ghost Rider in terms of what kind of expectations you should have going into it. Which I think is a positive, because as silly as Ghost Rider was it certainly wasnt boring or not entertaining in any regards. 

[RyanSz 3140]

Okay, this definitely better than the Ghost Rider movies but again that's not saying much. They did a pretty good job establishing the world of a Marvel character outside the Marvel universe, but there are still some issues considering that it was like the Ang Lee Hulk film in that they were trying to create a story without much of a foil/antagonist. Amhed's character is good as a villain, but the symbiote villain isn't really better or has a better motivation that's clear to the audience, it's just stated at one point and then nothing else is pushed forward with it as there's only ten minutes left in the movie. It hurts this film that the number of villains available to be used is limited due to Marvel having the bulk of character rights at their disposal, but Venom does have some lesser level villains that could have been used like Jack-O-Lantern.

Also I wasn't the only one who noticed the way the trailer showed symbiote being pronounced, as it was changed for the movie to proper phonetics, with the i making an e sound rather than a hard i. I'm sure that there will be some Jason complaints in future episodes about the eating in this movie which is fucking disgusting, if I never see Tom Hardy ravenously eating garbage chicken again, it would be too soon. Probably the biggest issue I had with this movie outside of the villain were the huge plot holes that were left by the end,

 

as it wasn't shown how Venom survived the final explosion that killed Riot/Ahmed, as he was shown being burned to pieces, and more importantly the fourth symbiote is never seen after a certain point so the viewer doesn't know if it too has died or has somehow escaped to infect Cletus Kasady, turning him into Carnage. This seems to be the case given the mid-credit scene with Woody Harrelson, but I'm hoping that gap is filled in the sequel because it is noticeable.

Lastly, knowing that this is getting mixed reviews at best and the organization is so obvious now in how it nominates things, expect Hardy and the symbiote to be nominated for worst screen couple for next year's Razzies.

[Soapstef 36]

I just want them to do this so I can get June's take on how distracting Michelle's hair is during this entire movie! Is it a wig, bad hair pieces or just out of date styling. I can't..its maddening the whole time!!!