VENOM Review Roundup: Find Out What The Critics Thought Of Tom Hardy's Anti-Superhero Movie
Venom hits theaters in a couple of days and the review embargo has only just lifted. Not a great sign? Well, find out what the critics thought of Sony's unofficial Spider-Man spin-off after the jump...
The embargo has lifted and the first full reviews for Sony Pictures' Venom movie are now online.
While we kinda dug the movie, the majority of critics were less than impressed - although there were a few brave souls that championed the first solo big-screen outing for the popular Spider-Man villain.
We've gathered up some excerpts below, so be sure to have a look and share your thoughts in the usual place.
To view all of the review excerpts at once, simply click on the VIEW LIST (ONE PAGE) button below!
THR:
The only startling moment in the thoroughly irredeemable Venom that makes you sit up and take notice comes at the 71-minute mark, when the sight of a disheveled, stubbly, sweaty and bloated Tom Hardy jolts you with the realization that here is the perfect actor to one day play Harvey Weinstein. For that insight and that insight alone, this film is valuable.
The Wrap:
Leaping from plot point to plot point without the hindrance of logic or characters, this big-screen return of the legendary Spider-Man nemesis — last seen in the franchise-hobbling “Spider-Man 3” — is aggressively loud and stupid without being much fun at all. It exists as a waste of time (although, one hopes, a sizable payday) for some very talented actors, and it’s proof that even Marvel doesn’t always get it right.
Whatever their intentions, the end result is that Venom, after a dreadfully tedious start, evolves into something genuinely surprising. I found it strange and amusing and occasionally endearing, even as I cringed at the clunky dialogue and covered my notebook in "WTF"s every time the characters did some dumb new thing.
Variety:
By the end, the character actually growls out a few vaguely amusing pissed-off things. (You begin to realize that he’s a new breed of snark beast around the time he drops a certain word starting with “p.”) But it’s telling that the TV commercials for “Venom” all feature this creature fully formed. Because it’s so long into the movie before Venom comes completely alive as a character that the commercials amount to a kind of spoiler. And it’s not hard to see why they’re designed that way. Venom could have been a fun creation, but the film spends too long watching him…originate. The movie “Venom” actually wants to be is the sequel.
JoBlo:
Ultimately, VENOM is better than I expected. Tom Hardy is terrific, and the actor is having a great time playing Eddie along with his new best alien pal. While the story is a bit obvious, I enjoyed the throwback to sci-fi alien invasion flicks. Ruben Fleischer has delivered a superhero feature that is frenzied and perhaps a little too facetious at times. Yet, when Venom attacks, it is a glorious thing to watch.
The most surprising thing about Venom (opening worldwide this week) is that it’s relatively unassuming. The long-in-development solo flick for one of the more popular Spider-Man baddies is clearly a picture born of compromise, one that is torn between the desire to be taken seriously as a respectable comic book superhero movie and a competing desire to openly make fun of itself.
EW:
Venom isn’t quite bad, but it’s not exactly good either. It’s noncommittally mediocre and, as a result, forgettable. It just sort of sits there, beating you numb, unsure of whether it wants to be a comic-book movie or put the whole idea of comic-book movies in its crosshairs. It never rises above bombastic and busy — which is something I never thought I’d say about a movie starring three aces like Hardy, Ahmed, and Williams.
Polygon:
There are two movies inside Venom, and they spend 100 minutes battling over a theoretical franchise-starter’s soul. There’s a big, clunky comic-book movie, in which a reluctant hero embraces and wields newfound powers to save the world, and clutching that by-the-books blockbuster by the throat is a bloodthirsty, symbiote romp spearheaded by star Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises), who sinks his teeth into the picture with tour-de-force comedic performance
Venom almost gets away with its nonsensical plot in the end thanks to that Eddie and Venom bromance, but then you’re reminded of the major missed opportunity here – more than once, actually. Venom should have been a quality start to Sony’s own Marvel franchise. This, however, is a film that doesn’t earn it and the multiple reminders from the studio saying, “Hey, don’t forget we want to make more of these,” only makes it worse.
Indie Wire:
Marvel has established such a consistent formula in its cinematic universe that this radically different approach will surely be jarring to some, but the fact that this movie could never exist in the same world as “Captain America: Civil War” despite hailing from the same brand of comics is part of its charm. “Venom” is very much its own entity.
GQ:
Not a lot seems to make sense in Venom, and after “Venom” does take him over, you can’t help but feel those 40 minutes might genuinely be missed. Ahmed plays Venom’s bad guy, as far as it goes - an Elon Musk-a-like - and it’s no shock that he has a secret too. But when a major fight scene resembles a pair of black pants caught in a white wash, it’s fair to say you haven’t taken the audience with you.
It’s not nearly as dark and bloody or brooding of a film as Sony could have made. Rather, it’s a loud, kind of silly action/buddy cop movie that just wants you to kick back with a bucket of popcorn and have a good time while a space monster licks his chops at you.
CinemaBlend:
Arguably, you can't have Venom without first having Spider-Man... which, in a nutshell, is the main reason that Venom, the movie, doesn't work.
Den of Geek:
We suspect that younger viewers (who are not traumatized by the violence, which is fairly harsh but still within quick-edit PG-13 parameters) and even some older fans may enjoy Venom as a kind of throwback to a more cartoony type of superhero movie. But even the comics have endeavored to offer more than meets the eyes, and the films have spent the last 18 years or so catching up to that. Venom wants to have it both ways, and ironically the split personality at the heart of this particular mythology may be a more telling metaphor than this movie and its makers realize.
Sadly, Venom suffers from the same lack of cohesion and rejects everything that might’ve turned it into a badass joyride in the vein of Deadpool or Guardians of the Galaxy. The result is a muddled hodgepodge that isn’t sure whether it wants to be comedic or take its troubled antihero way too seriously. (When your main character is threatening to eat someone’s pancreas as a tasty snack, you probably want to lean into the absurdity.)
Chicago Tribune:
It's a mess, but wow, is it ever a fun, fascinating mess.
Screen Daily:
In fits and starts, Fleischer’s dark strategy succeeds — thanks largely to Hardy, an actor who, from Bronson to The Revenant, has been unafraid to walk out on shaky limbs to play extreme characters. As Eddie, he starts off as a bulldozing investigative reporter who doesn’t care about social niceties when he’s pursuing a juicy story. But once the alien parasite takes over, Hardy lets loose, convulsing and flailing as he becomes a reluctant host to this malevolent being. Hardy isn’t known for comedy, but this strongly physical performance has a rambunctious energy — it’s as if Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil came to life —and there’s pleasure in watching this very serious actor go unhinged.
Can Tom Hardy play comedy – intentionally? The question remains worryingly unanswered in this clumsy, monolithic and fantastically boring superhero movie-slash-entertainment-franchise-iteration. The supposedly massive final showdown is so anticlimactic and pointless that it was only when it was followed by Hardy ruminatively sipping coffee on a stoop and chatting that I realised… that was it. That was the big finish.
The Verge:
The rapport between Eddie and Venom is ultimately the film’s most effective emotional element. Williams and Hardy have no chemistry — though, in everyone’s defense, it’s hard to root for the relationship after Eddie breaks into her computer. Ahmed might as well just sit back and twirl an imaginary mustache, given how many Evil Villain Speeches he’s forced to make. Over time, Eddie and Venom work out a begrudging respect, which of course neatly sets up a possible sequel where audiences might be able to enjoy Venom’s antics without having to feel bad about rooting for an evil parasitic space monster.
Screen Junkies: