This last weekend saw the latest Marvel movie release in Venom. Completely separated from the Disney owned Marvel Studios and Spider-Man Homecoming series. In fact, Spider-Man is nowhere to be seen in this movie or any future Venom project if there is one. I think going into this movie most people were aware that Spider-Man wasn't going to factor into this movie, but in case you didn't know, now you do. This movie follows Eddie Brock played by Tom Hardy who is a journalist in SanFran trying to find his next big story. That story comes along when a giant corporation near San Francisco called the Life Foundation, a company that's trying to make the world a "better place" through science and space exploration, has a huge incident. The incident involving a spacecraft crashing into the earth from space with new mysterious life forms. These life forms are called Symbiotes, and Eddie's search to find out all the dirty secrets of Life Foundation lead him to form a bond with the Symbiote known as Venom, changing his life forever and giving him more power than any average person could ever have.
This movie is kind of a mess. It's not the prettiest movie to look at, lots of CG filled action scenes that aren't very compelling a lot of the time. The story is mostly fine, but I found myself not caring about most of the characters since most aren't really given much time to grow or develop except Eddie Brock. The villain was pretty forgettable too, even though I kind of enjoyed what the actor Riz Ahmed was doing with the role, it felt like most comic book movie villains (that is to say he was forgettable). His motivations didn't always make complete sense, but it was enough to keep the story going. The story is all to set up Eddie Brock and Venom's relationship and how they become the team Spider-Man fans know them to be. I think it gets that part right, which is the most important thing in this movie. While everything around that might not work, the focus of Venom's powers and personality and how they affect Brock does work. Tom Hardy has good chemistry with himself as both characters, which I think was a good choice to have him play both Venom and Brock.
Most of the cast did an okay job with their roles, nothing stood out as terrible or great. That is except Tom Hardy, who was the only part of this movie that felt truly interesting. Eddie Brock and Venom's relationship was the best part of this movie and it was actually done pretty well. Tom Hardy did a good job at playing this strange character who's hearing voices inside his head by making it fun and not taking it seriously. There were some good moments of humor between Eddie Brock and Venom that really helped take this mediocre movie and make it a lot more watchable. Without Tom Hardy, I don't think this movie would have been any good. He carries this movie on his shoulders and does enough with the material to keep it interesting when it could have been and maybe should have been a lot worse.
I don't see myself returning to this movie anytime soon though, but I do think that there's room for a sequel. As long as Tom Hardy comes back and they work on the humor, action, villains, and side characters there could be something good here. This movie didn't really do much for me, which is disappointing when you look at all the potential it had. It was an okay movie with one standout performance that was just enough to keep it from being bad. At a time where Marvel comic book movies keep getting better and better, this one just doesn't live up to that standard. It might not be completely fair to compare it to a Marvel Studios film, but it's hard not to when they've set the bar so high. Hopefully Tom Hardy gets a second chance at Venom in the future because I'd like to see what other stories they can do with him. They just need to work out the other problems the film had (action scenes, villain, storytelling).
Overall Grade: C
