This is a really good review. It's better than the MCU fanboy critics that say its bad without espousing why or the defenders that say its good without detailing why it stands out. This film really needed that R-rating, although I think it would have been better without an evil supervillain, having Eddie fight the crime of the streets like he did in his early issues as Anti-Venom. Give the bad guys high tech or make them a threat en masse. The Dark Knight had a main villain that was mostly armed with small knives and detonators he had in his pockets and it was considered one of the greatest superhero films ever.
Good review, looking at the Good, Bad, and Meh. It results in an even-handed and readable analysis.
This review is pretty much exactly what I would have said. I definitely got an impression that there were too many chiefs and not enough braves - the director and the main star both had different visions for the film... Neither of which lined up with the studios own idea, hence the mishmash feel.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."
I think that part of the problem is that Carlton Drake never was that complex to begin with, so there was little to work with, Riot also wasn\'t complex either. I see the PG 13 as a plus, as Venom never was a R like character and it keeps the violence almost like it is in the comics despite Venom eating people which something Eddie!Venom does not do.
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The most entertaining 6,5/10 you're gonna get
Okay, so I am gonna be real with you and admit that, especially if you're a fan of the comics, you will feel this movie had the potential to be more. I will say that Ruben Fleischer dropped the ball in several regards, but that does not undermine the fact that it's an all-around entertaining movie. So breaking down the movies several aspects from positive to negative:
Positive: - Tom Hardy carries the piece, alternating between taking his role serious with the craftsmanship you'd expect of him, and scenes where he just straight up hams it up to eleven. - The Venom-Eddie dynamic is easily the heart of the movie and definitely warrants further appearances. - Anne Weying is given a lot more to do than the typical love interest and her honestly delivers her part in Eddie's Character Development just fine; she even gets a twenty-second tenure as She-Venom, but damn if those aren't some of the most memorable twenty seconds of the film. - Alternating between genuinely decently written comedy and unintential hammy hilarity, there is plenty of fun to be had watching this movie.
Hit-and-miss: -The action scenes in general have inconsistent quality: The fight scene in Eddie's apartment is fine and the subsequent chase scene, specifically the way Eddie and Venom cooperate in it, is probably the most distinct and unique action scene the movie has to offer, but you don't watch a Venom movie to see a chase-scene; The Venom vs Police fight is competent and entertaining, but without the R-rating to let Venom really cut loose you could honestly have copy-pasted any other Marvel character in there to the same effect. The final battle honestly starts out just fine, being a decently choreographed fight between two shapeshifters using those abilities while the lighting contrasts with their dark figure, but after it briefly cuts away to Anne then comes back the scene honestly devolves into an unsightly CGI extravaganza between two amorphous blobs, both of them black, against a Dark background. Honestly the most satisfying part of the fight is when Brock and Drake duke it out as regular folk. - In terms of Character Development, Eddie gets a servicable arc about regaining his will to fight for those who can't help themselves and, eventually, learning to accept his own responsibility in his misfortune. It never moves beyond servicable though, and beyond some scenes of Anne calling him out and Eddie himself contemplating it isn't given the most in-depth exploration. The Symbiote, meanwhile, has an at best limited build-up to his very sudden Heel–Face Turn.
The Bad: - The reason only Eddie and the Symbiote's character development is mentoined above is because the entire remainder of the cast exclusively exists for the purpose of Eddie's story. Yes, he's the main character and yes, a movie needs to focus, but all of the other characters are fairly one-dimensional.Some of them sympathetic enough to care about, but painfully one-note. - That goes double for the movie's villain, Carlton Drake/Riot. Despite bringning in an Academy-award level actor to play this role, he plays about every cliche in the "evolutionary mad scientist" book completely straight and, like some of the MCU's lesser offerings, also plays the whole "bigger, evil version of the hero with the same powers" role to a tee. I don't feel the need to rag on his motives, which are honestly self-explanatory enough and shouldn't really be too much of a minus, but they could have done so much more with this guy. - The movie's pacing. Even for an origin story, it has a rather Slow-Paced Beginning and even after Eddie and the Symbiote bond it isn't until about halfway into the movie that Venom, as a singular entity, comes into play. After that the plot moves at lightning speed but it's not until tha last act that the main Symbiote villain even begins to seriously come into play. - The music, mainly composed of rap tracks rather than stronger, more distinct orchestral themes a la the Raimi movies or the MCU, really gives this movie a weird early nillies vibe to it.
In conclusion, it's not that large parts of Venom dont work, it's just that they rarely move beyond being servicable. The things in this movie that do rise above that, however, definitely are enough entertainment to warrant a sequel. An R-rated, more well-paced and written sequel with it's own musical scores, preferably.