01 Oct Venom: Let There Be Carnage Review

BLUF: Venom 2 is a movie that contains characters and traces of plot threads that were found in the first movie. If this stunningly marginal narrative technique sounds exciting, you just might like this movie.

The first Venom was a pleasant surprise, in that it exceeded the expectations of everyone that suffered through Topher Grace’s abominable turn as the character in the incredibly disappointing Spider-Man 3. Venom was a box office smash, if not a critical darling, and audiences seem to have been ready for more. And to their credit, Sony’s sequel made about $90 million domestic this last weekend, so clearly there was interest.

Full transparency, I have never read a comic about Venom, and don’t really know a lot about the character outside the two prior cinematic ventures. So, my opinion about Venom is completely informed by what the movies present. And to me, the biggest problem is that Eddie Brock is shockingly unlikeable, rendering the rest of the entire affair a tedious, dull mess.

Here are some facts about Venom 2 that are salient to this opinion:

• Tom Hardy is a great actor in a role that allows him the unique working experience of playing two vastly different characters (Eddie and Venom). However, while Venom is funny, engaging, and has a genuine sense of purpose and direction in life, Eddie is a super-loser. Hardy has nothing to work with in playing a character with no traits that make him interesting, sympathetic, or even watchable most of the time. Eddie does not have a character arc and displays most of the same deficiencies from the first movie, having not learned anything or advanced in any meaningful way. He is a non-entity devoid of engagement.
• Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady and Naomi Harris’ Francis Barrison are the only characters with any meaningful development, but it is half-baked, incomplete, and undermined by Harrelson god-awful wigs—his second and third in this two-film series.
• The trope of having a hero lose their powers in the second movie is old and tired, which in an odd way fits this movie’s underlying level of laziness.
• There MUST be a law somewhere that makes underutilizing Michelle Williams this badly twice in a row a serious federal crime.
• Seriously, there are exactly zero characters I care about AT ALL.
• The Pirates of the Caribbean movies demonstrated that it is a terrible idea to take a great side character (Jack Sparrow in Pirates 1) and make him the main character for 4 more full-length movies. Sparrow was terrific in his limited role in P1, but devoid of any of the necessary characteristics to uphold a narrative outing. The Venom-verse is hell-bent on re-proving this folly.

Alan Moore, who wrote Batman: The Killing Joke, once said “I’ve never really liked my story in The Killing Joke. I think it put far too much melodramatic weight upon a character that was never designed to carry it.” While I would argue that Moore was demonstrably wrong, as recent portrayals of Batman have borne out, I do think that he identifies a likely candidate for why the Venom movies do not work. There is some tremendous potential in the dynamic of an anti-hero who consists of a human/alien symbiote with two distinct personalities. But this concept alone cannot seem to bear the narrative weight of a full feature film. Perhaps one day, the Venom universe will incorporate additional interesting characters and the right combination of character development that will give it the robust backing needed for a genuinely great film.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is not it.

Given the short length (97 minutes with credits), I think this opinion is validated by the filmmakers themselves. Given the box office of the first movie, I get why they made a sequel, but outside the money, this concept is narratively bankrupt.

Pros:

• Better CGI than the first film
• The film was directed by Andy Serkis, who played Gollum, King Kong, and Caeser the ape…there is no hint of his theatrical greatness in this movie, but knowing he directed it was objectively fascinating and more interesting than anything happening in the film itself
• Mercifully short in length
• OK post-credits scene

Cons:

• Unlikeable characters across the board
• Zero character development for anyone
• Tired story tropes
• Almost none of the humor hits
• Feels like a bunch of filmmakers picking up a paycheck

Rating: 1.5/5
The longest short movie ever, since there is nothing particularly interesting or engaging in its 97-minute runtime.

Review by Jim Washburn