Venom

Yes, there are probably too many superhero films. There used to be too many westerns, and too many teen apocalypse films, and so on. But this is Hollywood and they follow trends until the trend has been bled dry, and there certainly still seems to be a fair bit of blood in this particular stone. “Venom” combines a lot of fairly generic plot elements (Evil Scientist! Bland-quasi-love-interest! Overuse of CGI in the finale so you can’t tell what’s going on!) with a few bits of oddity in bringing a standalone film for one of Marvel’s more villainous characters, the symbiotic creature with big nasty teeth known as Venom, who in this case is domesticated a bit by having him largely kill bad people and fight against worse versions of his own kind. 

In all honesty, this is a bit of a mess when it’s not mindbogglingly predictable, and the action scenes vary between generic and incoherent, but it’s remarkably good at making Venom the standout character in the entire film, despite being either CGI or voiceover for the entire film. Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock, the human host of Venom, is your standard dickhead slob protagonist whose apparent crusading activism never really seems to involve having any other allies around him (does he have too much integrity, or is it more that he’s an inconsiderate dickhead? I know they probably want me to think the first, but it’s more likely to be the second), but his Venom voice has a delightful Cookie Monster quality, pure simple enthusiastic hunger, which feeds a very odd mismatched-couple action movie (one’s a knobhead reporter! One’s an intergalactic scavenger! Together they fight crime). Michelle Williams has almost nothing to do in the most generic of crappy girlfriend roles, although there is about thirty seconds when they suggest ways in which she could have been more interesting. 

I did kinda enjoy this despite the very flawed nature of the whole exercise, and the threat that we may be in line for a sequel that probably won’t use the promising elements of this film nearly as much as it will just be a more stupidly bloated version of the worst elements.