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Even if your work is difficult at the moment, you can rest assured knowing that it could be worse: you could be a journalist working for Sony Pictures. Venom, the studio's latest project, features an alien monster from the comics Spider-Man, appearing as the villain of Sam Raimi's third movie, Spidey. The project of giving him his own movie has been raging for more than a decade. And now, it's finally here, with Tom Hardy in the lead role, and Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) director. A few days ago, however, an interviewer asked Hardy to name the best scene in the movie. "Things that were not in the movie," Hardy replied. He then explained that his favorite "30 to 40 minutes" had been deleted: "Crazy puppet scenes. Scenes of dark comedies … They never got there. "
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Under these conditions, any negative criticism may seem superfluous, because it may not be more damning than that made by the leader of the film. But it's easy to see what motivated Hardy's complaint. Venom is obviously the victim of a brutal editing, and the film B which remains to the left is as disjointed and as fast as a trailer.
Hardy plays Eddie Brock, a television journalist who runs his own hit show in San Francisco, while he is constantly unshaven and looks like he is taking a shower. (His boss gently tells him, "There's no better investigative reporter than you," so maybe that explains him.) His last mission is to profile Carlton Drake ( Ahmed Rice), a vaguely Elon Musk-ish entrepreneur who shoveled his billions into space research.
One of his spaceships has just crashed – or rather crushed – into a Malaysian forest with a cargo of extra-terrestrial gooey substances. (Two recent films, Life and Rampage, include much more exciting versions of the same storyline.) Most of this gooey substance is reported in Drake's California lab, where he is determined to create a new species by linking living slime to human hosts. By the way, do not ask how this link works, nor which planet are the aliens, nor why one of them should choose to be called Venom. This kind of detail, as well as Hardy's favorite scenes, had to be removed.
Perhaps the favorite scenes of Ahmed have also been deleted. He acts as if he is bored by his blandness, which is less like a charismatic megalomaniac than a sidekick who is there to meet the demand of megalomaniacs. As for the real acolytes of Drake, they are presented as respectable professionals. Yet almost none of them seem to be bothered by the number of people reduced to the point of losing their corpses in their experiences. This amorality extends to Anne, Eddie's fiancée, played by Michelle Williams, who has no distinguishing features except for her short tartan skirt and long blonde wig. Considering she is a lawyer employed to cover Drake's deadly investigations, Anne can be expected to feel guilty about her dirty work, but filmmakers never realize she's far from being an angelic.
At least Eddie faces Drake, but he is fired from his job on TV the next day. He spends several months in a bar because, apparently, no other point of sale wants to employ the best investigative journalist in the world and he does not have a website or a YouTube channel of his own. Superhero films may not be famous for their logic and verisimilitude, but Venom's plot pushes him – even before we reach the sensitive "symbiots" of a other world.
He gives up trying to be a sci-fi horror film and being a crazy comedy
It's a relief when we end up reaching them. When Eddie enters Drake's lab, a sticky black puddle covers him and he has to share his body with a creature from space. At first, the extraterrestrial intruder is just a gruff voice in his head, barking instructions and stumbling in his conversations. Then he sends gloopy tendrils on him to defeat Drake's henchmen. And finally – after almost an hour – the vase wraps around it and it becomes an oily monster, measuring 10 feet tall, with its dark tongue and teeth resembling sharp stakes. There are nightmares, especially those of a dentist.
But instead of making it scary, the movie quickly establishes that Venom is a cartoon idiot who poses no threat to Eddie or his friends. Indeed, a movie that has been portrayed as a darker and scary alternative to the standard blockbuster of superheroes ends up being lighter and more child-friendly than most of them. During his last half-hour, he gives up trying to be a sci-fi horror film and being a crazy comedy, while the double act Eddie / Venom owes as much to Laurel and Hardy as to Jekyll and Hyde.
This section is surprisingly fun. Hardy throws himself into his double role with all the maniacal talent of Jim Carrey in The Mask and Steve Martin in All of Me. And there are some decent action sequences in which motorcycles and cars continue in the steep streets of San Francisco.
But Venom has just found its comic tone when it reaches its anticlimactic climax. The symbiote suddenly decides to be a hero rather than a villain. He then falls on another symbiote almost identical to the T1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Then we end with a fight between two gigantic CGI giants, a predictably but ruthlessly brief strike reminiscent of The Incredible Hulk, from 2008. You may remember that this movie was the first episode of a franchise longstanding, but no action has been taken. It is unlikely that Venom suites are also manufactured.
★★ ☆☆☆
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