Satsuma wrote:
Venom: wot I thunk
Michelle Williams is an amazing talented actor. She was also Jen in Dawson’s Creek and I love her. She has some decent chemistry with Tom Hardy. She starts off as a woman with a good job and basically just a womanly woman. This is good. Then, for some reason, she’s shoved into a short plaid skirt and dressed like a sexualised school girl. It was unnecessary and I’d have preferred them keeping her as a proper woman. She’s too good for that. As the love interest she’s relegated to a bit part but she did an alright job. Also there’s a conflict between her and Tom, of course, when he causes a monumental breach of trust. It gets her sacked from her job and they refer to this as the reason she’s upset with Tom. But it isn’t: it was the breach of trust and I’d have preferred they hammer this home rather than “I lost my job cause of you”. That happened but it wasn’t the reason their relationship fell apart.
Tom has an MRI scan goes a bit nuts. The doctor starts to power down the MRI and rushes in to make sure Toms alright. The doctor is clearly seen WEARING A WATCH. His arm would have been ripped off for God’s sake. Well, maybe not, but he should have known better.
The CGI is bad and the action sequences are very, very bad. I thought it was as bad as a Transformers movie but my friend thought it was worse. Why so bad: 1) almost all the sequences are filmed outside at night. Venom is black and his antics can barely be seen. 2) Venom and the black goo aliens are basically formless and the fight sequences are just swirling CGI mass of goop filling the screen. It’s shit. 3) To make matters worse the camera uses handy cam things for some sequences and handy cams do not make for good action sequences. In the dark. With a formless black goo. 3) there’s an epilepsy inducing bike ride sequence filmed with handy cam in the dark where the only thing you can see are the headlights of the traffic spinning around the screen. I actually felt sick watching it which I’ve never experienced before.
What about the plot: usual boring stuff about aliens. And people were all weird about aliens when the earth had been ravaged by aliens in The Avengers and superheroes exist so why’s this a big deal? Turns out it’s not in the same universe as the rest of the marvel films but I didn’t know that at the time so I was all confused why Tom was taking the piss about aliens. Meh.
Tom is merely alright but his relationship with Venom turns out really funny. Half of the film is a bag of shit but then it’s surprisingly hilarious. It’s a shame that this is an origin story because had they gone straight into Venom stuff I reckon it could have been really good. But then again I didn’t know much about Venom... but then again, what’s so hard, it’s a guy who shares his body with an alien? That’s probably why the new Spider-Man worked cause we skip the introductions and just smash on with the funnies.
I walked away thinking “hey I kinda liked that” but that’s probably because the back half was funny Venom stuff but thinking back on what I saw as a package it was merely 5/10 and probably worse than that, but it could set up a really great sequel. But if they did that they’d need to do a couple of things: film during the day, sort out the CGI, film it properly not like Michael J Fox is holding the camera and just have loads of fun with Venom and how he interferes with Tom’s life rather than some baddie of the day. That’d be a great film - Tom trying to win back Jen from Dawson’s Creek rather than fighting some big baddie. That’d subvert expectations. Won’t happen.
Went to see this last night, I think i disagree with some the above comments. It was laugh out loud funny in places, mainly the internal Brock/Venom arguments. MrsKov really enjoyed it too
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MetalAngel wrote:
Kovacs: From 'unresponsive' to 'kebab' in 3.5 seconds