How does a film which, from its mere conception, is a blatant cash-in on other established properties go about making itself seem something more than the blatant cash-in it is? As soon as word got out that Sony had given the green light to a solo movie based around Spider-Man bad guy Venom, it was hard not to greet the news both with a sigh of exhaustion, and a furrowed brow of confusion; how could this character, inherently a shadowy reflection of Marvel’s iconic superhero, function in a film of his own in which Spider-Man himself would not appear (nor, as it turns out, even get the slightest mention)? And given the track record of comic book villains given their own standalone ventures – most notoriously 2004’s Catwoman – was it really the best idea?
Happily, Sony have indeed managed to make Venom pretty much work, thanks largely to hiring a director and a leading man with just about the right balance of mainstream appeal and anarchic weirdness. I haven’t seen Tom Hardy and Ruben Fleischer’s earlier collaboration Gangster Squad, but I thoroughly enjoyed the dark humour and gleeful absurdity of the director’s breakthrough feature Zombieland. Hardy, meanwhile, is already something of a legend for his ability to find a refreshingly quirky angle on just about any role that falls in his lap. As such, they’re as likely a team as many to make this more than your average cash-grab comic book blockbuster, and while the end result is not without its many screamingly obvious problems, I daresay they’ve done as good a job as they could under the circumstances.
Hardy is Eddie Brock, and just like in the comics (and, of course, the much-maligned Spider-Man 3) he’s a journalist whose career suddenly goes on the skids. However, this time he’s based in San Francisco rather than New York (as good a way as any to distance the character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man), and rather than losing his job to rival Peter Parker, this time around it’s down to ambitious billionaire industrialist Carlton Drake (a charismatic if somewhat subdued Riz Ahmed). Essentially an evil Elon Musk, Drake has built his vast fortune on dodgy under-the-table deals and hushed-up criminal activity, and when Eddie attempts to bring some of this to light in an interview, soon thereafter he finds himself unemployed, not to mention dumped by his lawyer fiancee Anne (an unsurprisingly underutilised Michelle Williams), whose email he’d been sneaking a look at for leads. Of course, Eddie is dead right about Drake, whose latest morally and legally questionable venture sees his cutting edge science lab secretly playing host to a number of mysterious alien lifeforms brought down from space. These shapeless black organisms seek to bond with other living organisms in order to survive, which for some reason Drake believes is critical to the survival of the human race because of climate change, population growth and whatnot (you know how it is, they have to try and make this stuff current and relevant). Unfortunately, the symbiotes have a bit of a habit of making their host bodies do all sorts of weird, aggressive stuff, and soon thereafter leaving them dead. Unsurprisingly, it isn’t too long before the down-on-his-luck Eddie stumbles into the whole crazy scene, and one close encounter later, finds himself playing host to one such symbiote – yet, for some reason, his body and mind seem a particularly good fit for this amorphous entity from another world.
To get the downsides out of the way first, there is a great deal that doesn’t make much sense here. We’re told six months pass between Eddie losing his job and Eddie merging with Venom, yet in all that time the principle antagonist (I’ll avoid specifics to keep this spoiler-light) seems to have been working at an uncommonly slow pace. There are also plenty of questions to be asked about the specifics of said antagonist’s plot to take over the world, and quite why Venom turns against that plan in favour of protecting humanity. Quite apart from those logical inconsistencies, the overall tone of the film isn’t entirely consistent either, at least in part because of the studio’s well-publicised and largely unpopular decision comparatively late in the day to pare back on the grislier content to secure a PG-13 rating; a curious decision, given the Deadpool movies and Logan have proved that R-rated comic book movies can still make crazy money. It’s still proven that bit too dark and nasty to get a 12A from the BBFC, but compared with the last high profile 15-rated blockbuster The Predator, Venom is mild stuff indeed. (Honestly, it’s probably less violent and certainly less gruesome than last year’s Kong: Skull Island.)
Despite all this, there’s an underlying sense of fun and dark humour in Venom which proves hard to resist, and the lion’s share of the credit for this has to go to Tom Hardy. The actor makes Eddie Brock a loveable loser from the get-go, and once he merges with Venom, he fully embraces the Jekyll and Hyde madness, and at times the physical comedy aspects are almost enough to bring a young Bruce Campbell to mind. It’s also appealing that, while he may be widely admired for his looks, Hardy seems utterly unconcerned about being physically attractive on screen; the symbiosis is presented as an illness, and he perpetually looks in desperate need of a shower and a good night’s sleep. Of course, the actor’s physicality is also key to the abundant action sequences, and while CGI naturally plays a big role in much of this (particularly the somewhat overbearing final showdown), there’s still plenty of great practical stunt work, most notably in a very enjoyable large scale chase scene through the famously hilly streets of ‘Frisco.
Again, we might question the logic in giving a Spider-Man villain a solo movie which is completely unrelated to the current big screen incarnation of Spider-Man – yet in a way, this is also part of what makes Venom refreshing in today’s comic book movie climate. It harks back to the days before cinematic universes were the norm, characters existed solely in their own worlds, and you didn’t need to have seen every other film that studio had made for the past ten years in order to make sense of it all. As a sci-fi action horror mish-mash with its engorged snaking tongue largely in its cheek, Venom works just fine, even if it never gets quite as horrific or overtly comedic as we might have liked; and it works just fine as a a simple standalone blockbuster, even if the now-obligatory mid-credits epilogue gives us the now-obligatory teaser for the likely sequel.
Venom is in cinemas now, from Sony.