VENOM Review - Toothless and Terrible

Venom is an embarrassment, a reminder of the days when comic book properties were given bad budgets and bad directors with no expectations of making good movies. The Dark Knight and Iron Man were supposed to have swept away the likes of Ben Affleck's Daredevil, Shaquille O'Neal's Steel, and this garbage, but apparently not. The fact that Venom has been a box office giant won't help the cause, either.

I don't know where to start with this one. Tom Hardy, an actor I usually love, overacts and over-accents his way to self parody. Maybe this was a conscious choice, realizing he was in a stupid movie, anyway, so he decided to have some fun. Riz Ahmed and Michelle Williams are utterly wasted, and I'm frankly shocked either one of them agreed to be in this thing. Tom Hardy, I can understand - he had the opportunity to star in his own superhero franchise. But Ahmed and Williams? They thought it would be a great idea to jump from critical acclaim to crap with nothing to do, apparently.

Venom is set outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (I'm sure the creators of Avengers and Black Panther looked at this script, laughed, and just slowly shook their heads in Sony's direction), so there is no Spider-Man in the continuity. So why does Venom's head still look like Spider-Man? Good question! If there are no super beings in the film's universe, why does everyone react to seeing this gargantuan, man-eating SPACE ALIEN for the first time with the same surprise as if they'd just won a Big Mac? Another great question! And why does this superior being decide to meld with the body of Tom Hardy's character? I shit you not - "I was a loser on my planet. We're both losers." For this reason. and this reason alone, he decides NOT to destroy the world and help us instead.

The dialogue, the story, the effects - everything in this film is laughable. There is no actual plot that I could remember, just these people chasing these people and stuff blows up good. Avoid Venom - go see something else. Anything else. Hell, rent Ghost Rider with Nicolas Cage losing his mind if want want some crap that's at least fun to watch. Venom is the easily the worst movie I've seen this year.