this axe is not so sharp

Also, Eddie Brock is a weird and depressive sad sack, while his antagonists in this movie are a serial killer and his obsessive girlfriend. I wouldn’t say any of the characters are happy at the beginning of the movie, and by the end they’re all just less unhappy. It’s still fun, but it’s at least as dark and brooding…

The most recent MCU release, Shang-Chi, was the opposite of dark and brooding. It was fights, technicolour fun and enormous dragons.

The original Venom is the worst movie I’ve ever enjoyed watching. 

The interesting thing about the Tom Hardy Venom as a series is that it’s not a superhero movie, it’s an aciton-adventure alien romcom starring two hot messes mainly trying to save themselves and, incidentally, the world. That they’ve doubled down on all the things its fanbase liked in the first place - domestic…

***SPOILERS***

“Hey, Tom, I got you a role as Marvel superhero!”

“Great! Which one!”

“They want to give you your own movie right out of the gate! A sequel is practically guaranteed!”

“Oh, man, it’ll be great to work with Downey and Johansson!”

“Listen, I gotta run, but I’ll have the contracts faxed over later today, okay?”

Venom was a great Sunday afternoon couch movie. The fact that the sequel doubles down and it’s a cool 97 minutes is icing on the cake.

So it sounds like if you liked the first one, you’ll like this one.

Has Venom ever gone up against Deadpool? If Sony/Marvel/Disney/Fox could make nice for a Deadpool flick that features Venom, and really just get batshit weird with it, that could be fun.

Michelle Williams being in the sequel is definitely the most surprising part to me. It’s like her agent told her five years ago “hey, i can get you into TWO movies with Tom Hardy” and she just agreed without even asking what they were. Her character basically had nothing to do in the first one except give Tom Hardy’s…

I avoided the first one at the time because of the mixed press, but I watched it recently and it was a lot of fun? I mean, it isn’t great cinema, but Tom Hardy was enjoyable as the bumbling hero, and I laughed a lot. Looking forward to this one. 

It’s fine. Don’t expect it to be amazing, don’t expect it to be awful, and you’ll enjoy it.

I was very precisely whelmed by the first one. Not overly so, but not a deficit either. 

Slate was barely in it, with the most notable thing about her performance being that she mispronounced “symbiote” in the trailer, which was fixed in post-production before the actual film got released. Michelle Williams got to deliver the line “Oh no, I just bit that guy’s head off”, which I think wasn’t as good as if…

That wig on Woody Harrelson is a thing of beauty.

It’s a lot of dumb fun. 

Still never understood why Raimi agreed to include Venom — a character he clearly had no interest in. I understand he was getting heavy pressure from the studio, but he had just delivered them back to back blockbuster home runs. I find it hard to believe they would have fired him after that.

I had fully forgotten that Michelle Williams was in the first one (and apparently Jenny Slate?), and now I see they’ve roped in my girl Naomie Harris...

Things I learned reading this review: 1) Hardy was also the voice of Venom, I honestly did not know that and 2) Andy Serkis directed this one! That’s cool! Also, I think just off how Woody acted in True Detective, he really is a perfect trash convict Cletus Kasady, and the bad hairpiece honestly only helps.