Image of Venom in Venom. Photo courtesy of Sony.
“We are Venom,” growls the next superhero to hit the screen. Excuse me, correction: anti-hero. In the comics, Venom is a primary villain of Spider-Man, and is occasionally a vigilante. Is this a Spider-Man movie? No. While Sony still owns the film rights to Spider-Man, they are currently letting Marvel take control of the character. In the meantime, Sony is taking advantage of the many other Spider-Man related characters it owns, and is producing films based on them, isolated from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And so, we have a Venom movie, starring Tom Hardy, premiering on October 5th. People have been a bit divided on how promising the movie looks based on the trailers we’ve seen so far, but personally, I think it looks amazing – just creepy enough to work.
Venom is an alien parasite known as a symbiote. While investigating the facilities of the corrupt Life Foundation, reporter Eddie Brock (Hardy), accidentally bonds with the symbiote, and becomes Venom. Bloodthirsty, Venom is often able to take control of Brock’s body, and uses it to eat people, but also to protect Brock from those who seek to hurt him, as the Life Foundation goes after Brock to try to recapture the symbiote. Still a good person, Brock attempts to make a deal with Venom, that if they are going to kill people, it should be only bad people – hence the anti-hero title in the way of Deadpool, only way less comedic and dirty.
The CG created for Venom’s black slick body looks amazing. The wide white eyes and long curling tongue of the parasite are enough to give chills, but in a good way. And don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom just because this film is taking a darker path. It’s got its comedic moments, and while somewhat creepy, doesn’t seem to be too scary. It also looks, just based on the trailers, like it’s got its fair amount of awesome action scenes, that really use Venom’s abilities to their advantage. There’s no official word on the rating yet, as the film teeters between R and PG-13, but it’s definitely on the darker side of the superhero genre, which hasn’t had a real successful dark film since The Dark Knight (Batman V. Superman tried, but was ultimately not well received).
While I was skeptical when I first heard the film was going into production, the trailers we’ve gotten have convinced me that this film actually knows what it’s doing. It seems like the perfect combination of dark and comedy, thriller but not horror, superhero-y but different, and a whole lot of action. I am so there for that.
