#kind of want to give them a symbiote arc tbh but how would that even work when they're both already amorphous blobs.

[potterpastawrites]

got xmenpilled a while back and made some xmen ocs and i finally came up with a nemesis for my main guy who's a failed lab experiment by mr sinister but then i accidentally thought of them as "mr sinister and his horrible goo child" which led to "they're basically if flubber was evil" and. well.

[geneticmisfit]

Okay

Let’s talk Venom. Warning, this is LONG.

Okay so, two things

1.  I’m gonna first look at it as a movie, and then look at it as an adaption of the character, because those two are wildly different things and I never expect a movie to give us a correct take on the character, just that it is an enjoyable take on the character.

2. I’m also going to start with the cons first because boy do we have a lot

THE MOVIE:

CONS: 

The script is a god damn mess. It feels like they left two halves of different drafts in this movie. The movie doesn’t know if it wants to focus on the arrival of the symbiotes, Eddie’s slow acceptance of his new buddy, rivalry between Riz Ahmed’s character ( I could say Drake but would anyone even remember his name ) and Eddie, or the rivalry between Riot and Venom symbiotes, or the fact that symbiotes consume humans as food and jump from host to host. All of those plot hooks are in the movie but it tries to focus on each briefly and as a result ends up focusing on NONE of it. 

Acts are unbalanced. The movie spends way, way, way too long of a time in act 1. We get it, it is trying to show us Eddie’s life before things went south, the end of his career, and his lowest low after. But the movie draaaaaaaaags those events out. Eddie legitimately doesn’t get the symbiote until the 50+ minute mark, and the movie then spends another 20 minutes dealing with Eddie’s slow realization that he has a stowaway in his body ( there are three scenes of Eddie hungering ravenously without knowing why and eating random foods as a result. You only needed one scene of that. At least Tom is having fun, bless him. )

It glosses over things that are interesting, focuses too much on things that aren’t. This is connected to the act unbalance, but it warrants its own point. And we’re gonna do bulletpoints on this.      The movie spends an ungodly amount of time focusing on Drake’s obsession with the symbiotes in the first act ( you thought Lasher and Scream would be in this ? They die after possessing a few people but not fully bonding with them. ) but then does nothing with it once Riot and Drake bond.      Venom himself hints at there being a symbiote hierarchy and symbiotes having a Class system, it’s why Riot ( and later Carnage i’d imagine ) can form weapons with their body and Venom can’t, but it is literally ONE LINE and then the movie moves on. NO. FOCUS ON THAT. THERE IS INTRIGUE THERE ! Related to that, the movie makes it seem like Riot and Venom have history, but they only speak like 5 lines to one another before fighting to the death. Same with Drake and Eddie. Drake is the one who destroyed Eddie, yet Eddie doesn’t really fight with Drake over that during their fight. Third act is EXTREMELY rushed which might be because a) they have a lower budget than most so they can’t spend 15 minutes to a CG fight I get that, but also b) They probably wanted this movie to be under 2 hours, but the first act is too long and clunky to be worked around, so then you run into this problem. 

Characters don’t have arcs. Now this is a biggie, not that most characters lack arcs, but that the two characters that do have arcs are criminally underplayed. Firstly, Eddie has a non-verbal arc in that at the beginning he is, and I’m quoting Venom here, a pussy. He’s meek, he’s a bit of a coward that tries to make himself look brave, but cowers when shit hits the fan. But due to his time with the symbiote, he learns to be more assertive himself and bolder. That’s a good arc ! But you really have to pay attention to it because the movie doesn’t shine any light to it. There isn’t even a recognition of it. BUT THE BIGGEST OFFENDER OF ALL IS VENOM HIMSELF. Venom has an arc that completely takes place OFF SCREEN. So, apparently, Venom’s initial goal in the movie is to make it to Life Foundation and hijack their Rocket to bring his symbiote pals back, and he doesn’t really care for Eddie and is using him as a ride. Okay, that’s good ! And the movie kinda hints at that by Venom just sloooooowly fucking up Eddie’s internal organs and then acting extremely defensive when Anne’s doctor boyfriend mentions it, and gets hostile. Okay, that is also good ! But, during their walk to the Third Act Fight, Eddie asks why Venom suddenly wants to stop Riot and he is like ‘ Oh I want to live here now, I like it here. And you, Eddie, you helped change my mind. ‘ That is, on paper, is interesting. BUT WE DON’T SEE THAT SHOWN ON SCREEN. There is ONE, small, moment of Venom looking at the San Fran skyline and musing ‘ Oh. This planet is not as ugly as I thought. It is actually beautiful. ’ and that’s good, and you get the sense that Eddie, a loser, and Venom, a self-professed loser, are becoming better beings as a result of their bonding and Venom recognizes that and wants to keep going, that’s good too, but the movie DOESN’T SPEND TIME ON THIS. And as a result Venom’s character turn just feels absolutely out of left field and empty. 

......Phew. Okay, let’s focus on some PROS. 

Eddie and Venom dynamic is a JOY to watch. They are both like a bickering married couple and bickering college roommates and you can tell Tom is having a BLAST with this interplay and you have fun as a result. Reports say that a lot of what Tom did with his Venom scenes is improv and honestly you can feel it at times. It feels natural. Worth the price of admission alone tbh.

Action scenes are enjoyable. Almost all of the action scenes are released on YouTube as shortened clips so you could watch those if you so wish but, there are a handful of nice action sequences here. Riot - Venom fight is way too quick for my taste but it has HINTS of creativity that feels restrained by its budget, and it’s a dumb cg vs cg fight. If you enjoy those, like I do, then you’ll enjoy this one too. 

Venom looks good. Honestly, I see people saying his CG looks like shit but, honestly ? We have seen TERRIBLE CG characters in Superhero movies just last year. Steppenwolf was absolute ASS. He looked stiff, he moved like a toy, he didn’t emote, he was a blank face. And that movie had the budget of 300 million. Venom is THE OPPOSITE of that. His face is EXPRESSIVE, his movements feel FLUID, the way the symbiote lashes out with tendrils from Eddie and what it does without fully Venoming up is interesting and kind of cool to see. And this movie had a budget of 100 mil, so it’s impressive what they’ve managed to do with that budget. 

NOW LET’S LOOK AT IT AS AN ADAPTION OF THE COMIC BOOK

If you look at it from that angle, it’s..........not good. SPIDEY IS NEVER MENTIONED ONCE. Not even in the vaguest sense. There is the mention of a Daily Globe Incident that got Eddie kicked out of NYC press scene, and you could theoretically retcon Spidey into having a hand in that, but beyond that I have no idea how they could have a rivalry in this universe they’re trying to set up. If they cross paths, it seems it would be to TEAM UP rather than FIGHT. There also aren’t any major references to Spidey’s world at large. Kletus appears in the mid-credits scene, Woody Harrelson in a glorious Carrot Top wig, and apparently the astronaut who dies in the crash that brings the symbiotes to Earth is J.J.’s son 

Eddie is not Eddie from the comics. He isn’t angry, he isn’t bitter or vengeful, as I previously mentioned he is extremely meek and cowardly, and only after getting the symbiote does he become more Assertive and sure of himself. He is, however, still a dick at times, so that’s nice. So if you go into the movie expecting classic comics Eddie, you’ll be sorely disappointed. 

TL; DR

It does feel like this movie has a lot of cons than pros, HOWEVER, the strength of Hardy’s performance and the dynamic between him and the symbiote is SO good, and seeing Venom is SUCH a blast, that it kinda ends up balancing out the negatives. THE FIRST FORTY MINUTES ARE UNEVENTFUL AND BORING, and feel free to take your pee and food breaks then, but after the Venom gets inside Eddie, the movie becomes MUCH more fun and enjoyable, and becomes a Good Time to be perfectly honest. There is a decent foundation here, and if Sony gets better screenwriters, and focuses on what made this movie good, and throws out the parts that didn’t work, it could legitimately have a real strong sequel. This movie does feel like it desperately wants to deal with Venom being a Lethal Protector, but is Obligated to set it up for the regular movie going audience so it doesn’t come out of left field, and you can tell the movie really enjoying itself towards the end when it finally set that all up.

TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ THE TL; DR

The movie is a solid 6.5. / 10. Go in expecting 90′s goofy ass comics Venom rather than Hardcore Spooky Crazy Venom, and you’ll have a jolly good time.

[agirlwithachakram]

So I was just looking around to see if anyone had information on what got cut from the movie because there is very clearly some stuff missing; no writer would have finalized a script without at least one more scene in there. And I found some genius trying to CinemaSins this flick already instead of looking at the actual, primary plot hole.

None of that actually matters! They aren’t even plot holes. They're easily explained. Here's the plot hole: What made Venom change their mind, really? Where is the scene that gives us a real emotional core to the film? It's a romance! It's a romance between an angry rebellious alien soldier and a sad washed up reporter that just wants to keep innocent people safe and they didn't have...the romance...or even some kind of real turning point that led to Venom's turnaround. The real issue isn't the little nitpicky things (that I thought were pretty clear in the movie tbh?); it's the fact that it feels like they cut a scene that gave us the emotional arc we needed to see.

I posted that comment, saying I wasn’t gonna be bothered to explain all those nitpicks, but...

SO

"Why doesn’t Carlton Drake’s cutting edge laboratory have any security cameras in it?" Maybe it does and jenny slate cut the feeds. maybe it doesn't because he's afraid of evidence and leaks. maybe it's not a heist movie and there's enough to worry about so we don't need them.

"Why doesn’t Eddie seem surprised the first time he wall-runs around a guard? Or the first time he jumps through a wire fence?" Well first, he absolutely does. Maybe he doesn’t make a Ted Theodore Logan “Whooooaaa” face, but he definitely seems confused. He's also being controlled by an alien and maybe his face isn't doing the things you expect it to. And he’s running for his life because people are trying to murder him to death so he’s preoccupied with that.

"Why do Eddie and Anne break-up so easily?" He broke into her classified documents and got her fired. Yeah, you'd probably dump your boyfriend too. Is Eddie less fiercely attached than he might be in the comics? maybe, but it’s a movie and there wasn’t time to deal with the fallout of him refusing to accept a breakup and we would have liked him less if he did.

"Why can’t Venom smash a regular glass window in Dr Lewis’ MRI office?" Because he’s dying for lack of a host and is weak without one.

"How does that scary little girl get through airport security on her own? Does Riot know how to use a passport?" She went with her mother, that's why Riot picked her. Were you even watching this movie?

"What did Riot do for six months in Malaysia at the start of the film?" Scope out the world, try to figure out what was going on, how humans worked, and where the other three had been taken. Is it a slightly long timeline? yeah. but is that super important to the story? no.

"What happened to the other symbiotes?" Two of them died in the lab. The others are trapped on a comet and won't get off of it without help, which is not coming now. That was a major plot point, and we saw the corpses of the two unnamed symbiotes. I’m not actually sure you were engaged with this film, friend.

"Why are the film’s three main characters the only humans who can bond with them? They aren't. The old woman in Malaysia was evidently a strong match for Riot, as Riot was in her for six months. It also seemed that Venom became less dangerous to humans once he found his best match. Also, forcing the symbiotes into hosts was stressful to them and the hosts, and gave them no choice as to who would match well, leading to a higher likelihood of death. AND a lot of the people in the labs DID bond, but Drake had them on IV nutrients, which wasn’t an effective way to feed the symbiotes, which ended up munching on their hosts’ organs, which is why Maria and that other guy died. Venom wasn’t in Anne very long, and was able to see that she was an acceptable candidate before he bonded with her. And because they had plot armor, which is FINE, it was a campy superhero flick. You can go home if you're not having fun.