[Trivial Psychic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SymbiSpidey

So I just saw Venom and...



the pacing is way off. The 1st 3rd of the movie just felt like it went on forever, but once Venom came into play, the movie was enjoyable. Nothing special or anything, but it was stupid dumb fun in the way the first Michael Bay Transformers was, but without the juvenile jokes.

The Venom and Eddie relationship was probably the best part of the movie and they gave Venom some actual personality instead of having him be this dark edgelord.


That being said, it made me wish even more that we'd get a proper MCU Venom to fight Spider-Man.

I also saw Venom over the past week, but I withheld mentioning it until I could figure out how to explain what I saw without spoileers.

Truthfully, I came out pleasantly surprised. When this film was announced, I was one of the ones who questioned how they could set up this origin without involving Spider-Man, and honestly, I thought that they did the best they could without having dived deep into that convoluted past. What the people who are still whining about that need to realize is that this film is a very loose interpretation of "Lethal Protector", where Venom had already relocated to San Francisco, "reformed" into an anti-hero, and was flying solo for most of the mini-series until Marvel found a way to force Spidey into the book for the obligatory cameo appearance. On it's own though, that story does just fine without the wallcrawler. As for the film, there's a couple of blink and you miss them easter egg references that set up the origin and backstory to the symbiotes and Brock, and piece it all together well enough to unite the two.

Like Symbi said, the interactions between Brock and the Symbiote steal the show. As someone who tends to snicker at the snarky way characters in MCU talk to one another CONSTANTLY, I felt that the banter between the two was actually funny in a way that didn't feel forced for a change. I caught myself laughing out loud a couple times. The action sequences were great, the bike chase was pretty impressive and the other scenes where we see Venom doing his thing is pretty fantastic. I thought it was really cool to see how fluid and quick he moved on-screen, and it somewhat confirmed to me how he would actually be able to hold his own against someone as fast as Spidey in the comics, because he's just as fast, if not faster himself.

I've heard the complaints about the film feeling like an early 2000's comic film, and to that, I agree, but there's a reason for that. Much of the dialogue is scripted as such. It's amazing how people will read comic, see a line in the middle of a fight that reads something like "YOU'RE NOTHING!" and not bat an eye, only to cringe when that same line is used on the big screen during an action sequence. Many of Venom's most cringeworthy lines are taken straight from the pages of the comics...go and pick up ASM #374 as an example if you don't believe me.

The other place where it felt like an early era comic film comes from the pacing like Symbi said. The movie takes a bit to get going, and there's a couple of strange edits that leave a disjointed feeling at times. Once Eddie merges with the Symbiote, the movie takes off at a breakneck pace, and before you know it, you're seeing scenes happen without really knowing how you got there in the first place, and then wham...it's off to the symbiote death match finale and the credits are rolling, leaving you feeling like..."Whoa, already?" This film was obviously trimmed a bit to get down the the PG13 rating, and I wonder how much was trimmed to get to the final cut? Cropping something as little as ten minutes can take a good film and turn it into a mediocre one (i.e. the original Daredevil.) Hopefully there will be a director's cut when this drops to home release.

All in all, I enjoyed it, and it's probably the best they could have done without shoe-horning Spidey in there. There's also a bunch of cameos and fun easter eggs to look for as well.

One final note...they REALLY need to stop showing the final scenes to films in the trailers. This is something Hollywood REALLY needs to stop doing, because I will admit, it did sour my experience with this film a bit.