The new Venom movie may be celebrating a hugely successful opening weekend, but it hasn’t fared nearly as well with the critics, who currently have the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score at a measly 30%.
While that still suggests half-decent reviews from almost a third of documented reviewers, this ratio certainly leaves Eddie Brock’s first standalone movie heavily lacking when placed alongside any of the character’s comic book kin in the MCU. What’s more, a lot of the critics who didn’t like Venom, really didn’t like Venom, and so Screen Rant has compiled a list of the most brutal write-ups received by the Tom Hardy flick.
Look below for some of the harshest takes that the internet has to offer:
“Venom” is the kind of comic-book movie that people who hate comic-book movies think that all comic-book movies are like. 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 (whether it’s the studio or other films based on its imprint) doesn’t always get it right.
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. Hardy himself has said that the film’s best 30-40 minutes have been cut. At least that makes this shorter than it would otherwise be.
The Film Stage (Vikram Murthi)
There are flashes of a different kind of Venom, one that vacillates between ego and id, offering clarifying commentary in between rampages, which could have been an interesting foil to Hardy. Instead, he’s just a parasitic alien with a badass ’tude who helps Eddie save the world from a poorly conceived global threat. That might be what The People want, but after two hours of misshaped plotting edited with assistance of a butcher knife, they might just crave those cut scenes of Hardy weirdness that Venom desperately tries to restrain.
Sony Pictures appear to have lavished a nine-figure sum on, and are now hoping to establish an entire cinematic universe on the back of, a character who looks like someone drizzled Creme Egg filling onto a bin bag.
The script (by three credited writers) plays out like a Marvel movie that might have been made in 1996, with no nuance, little character development, and a clunky, on-the-nose style of advancing its plot that seems hopelessly juvenile and antiquated… The scenes in which Eddie and Venom (as the symbiote inexplicably comes to call itself) banter back and forth do have their amusing moments (along with some cringe-worthy dialogue), and it probably would have helped if the movie embraced the humor in this full-on, sort of in the style of Deadpool… It’s like someone crashing a cymbal next to your left ear while someone else is pounding on a piano in your right.
The best description of Venom as a movie is provided by a quote from the titular antihero itself: “An armless, legless, faceless thing… rolling down the street like a turd in the wind.” […] Tom Hardy does his best to elevate a tonally confused script, but Venom will leave you begging for an antidote.
That’s why it’s disappointing to see Sony’s nascent, fumbling attempt at a Spider-Man without Spider-Man universe stumble through so much superhero-move detritus: perfunctory side characters (especially the women); the ultimate villain that’s essentially a supersized version of the hero; the fact that Venom becomes a de facto hero almost immediately; and, of course, a dopey mid-credits teaser presuming automatic interest in other characters who have interacted with Venom in the comics. The filmmakers seem faintly aware that not all comic book characters are superheroes, but unsure of what else Venom could actually be. In other words: It’s Venom! What else do you rubes want?
An idea is like a virus, they say. It’s resilient, highly contagious, and even the smallest seed of an idea can grow, and grow to define or destroy you. In Sony’s not-really-anti, anti-superhero movie about an extraterrestrial intestinal worm, an incredibly ill-advised idea takes hold and is seen through to the bitter, ridiculous end: the parasite is Venom, a protozoa alien that infect and overwhelms its unsuspecting human host victim, and like the biotoxin germs that leave the protagonist gravely unwell, the all-consumingly cartoonish concepts in “Venom” are regrettably defining, self-immolating and gag-reflexively misjudged.
Overall, we’re not anticipating Venom to win big when awards season rolls around, but it’s likely that the team at Sony aren’t losing too much sleep over these negative reviews. Aside from the film’s record-breaking box office success, the feature has also fared surprisingly well with the general public, with Venom holding a respectable CinemaScore of B+. So even if a lot of critics wouldn’t be too pleased to hear of a sequel on the way, you can bet that there were more than a few filmgoers who got at least a little excited by the movie’s post-credits teaser.
If you haven’t seen Venom yet, and this plethora of bad reviews hasn’t put you off, then the film is out now in cinemas and yielding high enough box office figures to suggest that a Venom 2 may well be on the way.