I liked it!
I was not thrilled about the first trailer and to be honest, I was never a huge Venom fan. I mean, I liked him as a Spider-Man villain, but never really cared much for the anti-hero thing of the mid 90s. Heck, I really enjoyed the whole story where Eddie sells the Symbiote to the highest bidder. I believe Scorpion (Max Dugan) purchases it, but the Symbiote cannot function the same in Dugan. Anyways, I think Spider-Man has to help Eddie get it back in order to save Eddie’s life.
Anyways, the movie does not even try to be like the MCU films. In fact, the movie felt more like the original Spider-Man movies. It totally embraces some of the more comic book-esque elements.
Tom Hardy was great and he definitely pulled off the crazy, talking to himself thing perfectly. The best way to describe it is like the movie Drop Dead Fred. He and Venom argue and fight, and normal people think it is just some random dude freaking out.
The restaurant scene with him eating the lobster was probably one of the funniest things I have seen in a comic book movie. Tom Hardy just pulls it off so well.
Another great thing in the movie was the motorcycle chase scene. It was pretty intense, with Eddie not knowing what was happening and Venom taking control at times.
That being said…there were some bad things. The whole final fight with Riot was a little weak. It actually took me a minute to realize that this was the final fight. Do CGI directors think that a fight between two beings that look almost identical and then combine into a giant pile of goo actually looks cool?
The villain was also a little weak. It started out good, with Drake being this Elon Musk type character, but I really had a hard time buying the whole experimenting on humans thing. None of those people working for him were against it? It just seemed so completely rushed, even for an eccentric billionaire.
The mid-credit scene was fairly predictable. I mean, we know that Carnage will be introduced. I did not stay for the end-credits scene, which I guess was just another clip for Into the Spider-Verse, which actually looks awesome. I guess the text on the screen says something like “meanwhile in another universe…”
So yeah, I was happy with the movie. I hope they make a sequel.
