When the first Venom movie came out, I hated it. I honestly thought it was a rival for worst movie of the year that year. My views softened a bit over time, concluding the movie was more mediocre than awful in many respects, but I still have no real interest in seeing it again. It was basically everything bad about superhero movies done in a single film. Plus, it got a dull performance out of Michelle Williams, and that was something I didn’t even think was possible before I saw that one.
Well, the sequel just came out, and with Andy Serkis in the director’s chair, I figured it there was anyone who knew how to direct actors with motion capture monsters overlaying them, then it would have to be the guy who made Gollum, Kong, Snoak, and Caesar believable characters. Well, most of them.
Actually, Serkis managed to do something I didn’t think was possible: he made me like a Venom movie. Venom, as a character, is fine enough. I am a Spider-Man fan and all, and there have even been some good Venom stories, but the movie character didn’t work for me. What Serkis did was, essentially, make the whole thing a lot more bonkers. The opening sequence wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Tim Burton Batman film given the look of the juvenile hall that holds young Cletus Kasady (played for this scene by someone who looks nothing like a young Woody Harrelson but dubbed over by the actual Woody Harrelson) and his teenage love Frances Barrison (Naomie Harris when she grows up). After the two are separated and Frances loses an eye after trying to use her sonic powers to escape a police van, we cut to the present as scruffy Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is coming to the prison to interview Kasady (Harrelson in the flesh), but during Eddie’s interviews with Kasady, somehow a new symbiote attaches itself to Kasady just before he is to be executed by the state. Now as the new, seemingly unstoppable monster Carnage, Cletus can kill at will, but all he wants is his love back and maybe some revenge while he’s at it. See, Carnage knows that Venom is the one thing on the planet that can stop him, Eddie disappointed Cletus, and Detective Peter Mulligan (Stephen Graham) cost Frances her eye. There’s plenty of revenge to go around.
Small problem: Venom and Eddie are fighting each other over whether or not Venom should be allowed to feast on the brains of evil-doers.
The Eddie/Venom relationship is actually the highlight of the movie, and it helps that the tone of this part of the movie is more of a mismatched buddy comedy than anything else. The two bicker nearly constantly for most of the movie’s 90+ minute runtime. I don’t know that I found any of the lines particularly funny, but Hardy really sells a guy fighting, basically, himself. The movie might be seen as weird romance of sorts between Brock and Venom, and it even seems to take some time to mock the first movie lightly with some of Michelle Williams’s lines. She didn’t seem quite so bland this time, but maybe that was because her character was less of a cliche this time.
That said, while I did like the movie, I wouldn’t say I loved it. Harrelson and Harris are having fun as their respective villains, the fight scenes are comprehensible this time, and Serkis finds a lot of interesting angles and shots to toss into the movie. But ultimately, it does turn to the third act CGI brawl, and Carnage seems to be coming out of a completely different movie, particularly since the desire to get a PG-13 rating no doubt neutered how much the character can actually do on-camera. I would say making superhero movies a full R-rating should be done on something like a case-by-case basis, but keeping Carnage a true threat probably can’t be done at this rating, especially with the Venom scenes being played largely for laughs. And then there’s the whole Venom-at-a-rave scene…basically, this was a fun popcorn flick, but not something I think I will need to see again any time soon.
Grade: C+
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