ROW and Highbrowl have just seen Venom, starring Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, and Riz Ahmed, and directed by Ruben Fleischer.
- ROW: Wow! Umm, that was…not as bad as I expected! I really thought this would be a shit-show of a movie, but it had fun moments in there; holy owl though, it’s a weird freaking movie!
- H: As soon as I get home, I’m searching for the story of how this movie got made; reshoots, different creative staff, and rewrites. I want to know it all, because damn this movie feels like it was shot 10 years ago!
- ROW: Yeah, I want to know all the drama that occurred behind the camera; mostly, this seems like a movie pushed around by the suits.
- H: Should we talk about the movie for a bit before we get into the weird shit?!
- ROW: I guess; I liked roughly 30 minutes of this movie and some of the action scenes are good, but mostly it’s adequate modern action stuff! The 30 minutes that I liked are mostly comedic stuff, so I guess I liked the comedy aspects of the movie; in fact, I think that if they treated the whole movie like that I would have enjoyed it a lot!
- H: If we are talking about the same 30 minutes, then I’m right there with you! This movie benefits from having another excellent—and challenging—performance by Tom Hardy, and a great director; Fleischer directed Zombieland and 30 minutes or less amongst other TV shows and movies. Some of the action scenes had cool moments and the special effects were not as bad as I initially expected, but overall this is a bad movie if you don’t count those 30 minutes.
- ROW: I would not say it’s bad, besides the awful first 40 minutes. Those 40 minutes are the most bored I’ve been in a superhero movie for a long time; nothing happens, the characters are boring, the set-up is boring, everything moves at a snail’s pace. However, after that the movie becomes at worst adequate: The comedy’s pretty good, the action scenes have cool moments in them, the plot…is so bad that you focus on anything else besides that!
- H: See, that’s what makes it bad for me; if the plot had a coherent structure, or was just attempting a simple, but well-executed, message then Venom would have been alright! But, it is convoluted and confusing to follow, and above all boring. Through it we got good comedy and some nice action, but those are not enough for me!
¯_(ツ)_/¯ - ROW: Me neither! But, it is genuinely one of the weirdest movies of this year; not in terms of structure, visuals or anything related to film-making, but as a product that was released today! Because this has the tone of the “serious” superhero movies of today, and the unstable tones of superhero movies of yesteryear. This is a messy movie, but because this thing doesn’t happen all that often anymore, I found it to be kind of novel and weirdly interesting to watch! Also, Tom Hardy kind of saves this movie, because the best part about this movie is the interactions Eddie Brock has with Venom and that’s mostly down to how well Tom Hardy performs, and he is excellent!
- H: I get the novel part, but I don’t agree with it; in the end it’s a boring movie but with novel reasons for being one! But, I seriously enjoyed the “Eddie Brock interacting with Venom” stuff; that whole initial segment and all the other scenes that erupt from that are very enjoyable. In the end though, the plot is boring and uninteresting; the action is mostly fine and the comedy is pretty good, but overall it was a boring experience! I rolled my eyes, more than I laughed which is enough for me to know that this is not a good movie.
- ROW: I guess my view is that, the saving grace for this movie is the comedy and Tom Hardy; Michelle Williams is fine, Riz Ahmed is okay, but Tom Hardy was really good as Eddie Brock. But, even with that I have to say that, this movie should only be seen if you’ve seen everything else and your movie night comes down to Venom vs Johnny English Strikes Back
Ruler of Owls 