302.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage
5/10
Tom Hardy brings back Venom onto the main screen and this time are promised carnage. With the hope that this is a good thing, Woody Harrelson has joined the cast to play a serial killer named Cletus Kasady, later becoming Carnage. If you've seen the first Venom movie, you know what you're letting yourself in for. Another Sony movie which is struggling to keep up with the MCU in using its Marvel characters well. I would have really been excited for this movie if I knew that Sony wasn't constantly missing the mark but let's digest what kind of carnage we got ourselves in to.
At a run time of 97 minutes, I already think this movie could well be rushed and kept to a minimum in order to lack the opportunities for mistakes. The movie begins by setting up Cletus' backstory which shows him in a home for unwanted children where his girlfriend gets taken away to a maximum security facility due to her special powers. She has super sonic screams and although she puts up a fight and injures a cop, she is still taken to her final cell, with a bullet wound in her eye.
The cop is now a detective and played by Stephen Graham and needs Eddie Brock to interview Cletus as he will not speak to anyone else. Just as this gives his career a boost, his ex calls him to announce she is engaged, much to the displeasure of Venom. Cletus is be to executed for his crimes and one last interview ends in a confrontation between himself and Brook.
Cletus bites Eddie Brook and a little bit of symbiote makes its way into Cletus' bloodstream. Eddie makes it home and him and Venom have an argument about how Venom feeds, ending with both deciding to go their separate ways. The scene cuts to Cletus ready for his lethal injection but it doesn't go to plan as a red symbiote named Carnage puts a stop to things. As he escapes whilst killing cops and freeing criminals from their cells, Carnage now shows himself in full force. The scene is created to make this symbiote look as violent and large as possible, considerable more than we have seen Venom in the previous movie and scenes from this one. Cletus sets out to find his girlfriend from those years ago and its quite an easy job to find her and free her. Now played by Naomie Harris, Barrison is recruited to help kill Brook and Venom.
Brook needs to find Venom in order to fight back and finds him in the shop owner Mrs Chen. They forgive each other and prepare for the final battle.
Carnage is holed up in a cathedral, with Mulligan the detective as a hostage, Barrison now has Mrs Chen. Mulligan is seemingly killed by being hung from a chain, Carnage is winning with ease until Barrison is tricked into using her power which separates Carnage from Cletus and kills him whilst Venom devours Carnage. The cathedral collapses on Barrison killing her and Mulligan is somehow still alive with a blue glint in his eyes, hinting that he has somehow digested a little bit of symbiote.
Brook and Venom are now fugitives and somehow make it to a nice beach resort on holiday to discuss their next move. Up next is the mid-credit screen. They are discussing the symbiote's universe when a large flash transports them to another hotel room. One TV we see J. Jonah Jameson talking about Spier-Man's real identity. Venom ends the scene licking the screen hinting that he wants to eat Peter Parker. Clearly this has been caused by the multi-verse cross over in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Another swing and a miss from Sony for me. God loves a tryer but honestly I think they just need to give up any rights they have, back to Disney and say they had a go. The story to this movie felt rushed, patchy and actually boring. Our hero and villain hardly interact and when they do, it's far from edgy and tense, our hero has nothing to solve but find out where the final show down is taking place and have a bit of rough and tumble for 10 minutes. Instead, Sony took us on a journey of a weird feeling gay couple bickering constantly until they split, only to resolve their differences to save the day.
Hardy, Harrelson, Michelle Williams and Naomie Harris have all had success on their CVs but my word, they'll not want to add this when going for interviews. You can't blame them, you have to look at the writing as we have already mention what the chemistry of Eddie Brock and Vemon was like. Cletus was such a strangely written character as he had no new feeling other than a normal psychopath that could have been copy and pasted from any other movie. Cletus's girlfriend eventually added nothing to the storyline, even with her mutant powers and finally having Brock's ex-girlfriend still floating about with the hope she becomes She-Venom for 30 seconds is just a waste of a role and payslip. Yes we had some laughs with a bit of darker humour compared to normal Marvel movies. Yes some of the action was ok at times and this was a movie for escapsim but is that really enough?
This could have been the exact same movie on much less of a budget as even the CGI didn't spark a smile. The whole movie is made worth while to sit through just for the end credits where there is a link with Tom Holland's Peter Parker but this gets extinguished in a few MCU movies time. Thankfully. It hurts that I paid for this movie for my steelbook collection but life's a bitch.
