Venom Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs
How does Tom Hardy's Spider-Man spin-off hold up?
When Sony announced plans to make their own Spider-Verse spin-off movies at the same time as Marvel's MCU Spider-Man ones, it was deemed either genius or ridiculous. The studio heads were either inspired in the alignment of their totally unlinked movies with the biggest, most marketable juggernaut or they were damning the spin-offs by proximity.
How you felt about that would no doubt depend on the quality of the final movie and now it's here and we can all start the real assessment. It was always going to be a pretty divisive (even with those hilarious accusations that Lady Gaga fans have tanked the reviews), but the broad picture is... not great for Ruben Fleischer's spin-off according to reviews.
But give it a chance. It's not all ENTIRELY terrible and this could be another of those films that split fans and critics right down the middle, so there's space to assess both the good and the bad. First the negatives...
Downs
5. The Trailers Misrepresent A LOT
Venom is not the movie that the trailers claim it is. They suggest this is a sort of buddy-cop movie where Eddie Brock and Venom learn to co-exist and share a body, Hulk-like. They suggest that Venom arrives fully formed as a wise-cracking, sentient being. They are lying to you.
Maybe this is all why Tom Hardy said what he said about those 40 missing minutes of "fun" material that he enjoyed making the most. Maybe, in the end, the best film Venom could be - and the one it wanted to be and its star wanted it to be - doesn't yet exist. But if they continue down the path of the second half of the movie and iron out the issues, the second one could be that movie. Hopefully.