Around a decade ago we received two of the worst adaptations of beloved comic book characters to film in the first appearances of Deadpool and Venom.  Fox butchered Deadpool to a point where it was offensive and Sony gave us a damn jazz dance off (insert Picard meme).  Fox has since redeemed themselves and Venom is Sony’s effort to do the same.  With the bar set so low initially it was hard to not improve upon the Spiderman 3 fiasco although Venom didn’t quite achieve floating in a glow of light redemption.  It was a good effort with moments where it felt right but didn’t hold up for its entirety.  It was like Sony initially broke your favorite Transformer and came over the next day and brought you a GoBot to apologize.  Thanks for the effort but I’m still not satisfied.

There are things they do well in Venom, and an equal part that they did poorly.  It is known that Venom was heavily edited to conform to the mass market strategy of achieving a PG-13 rating.  Without seeing the unedited version it is merely speculation that this had a negative effect on the final outcome, but it is hard to not put some of the blame on that assumption.  Tom Hardy (Eddie Brock) gives a performance that mirrors the movies tone.  There were times where it was working well and at other times he misses the mark.  Certain scenes felt phoned in.  Riz Ahmed (Carlton Drake) who was great in HBO’s The Night Of, plays an Elon Musk character ready to eject off this planet.  He plays the character of a heartless CEO well.  There were really no other performances worth mentioning.  Michelle Williams (Anne Weying) plays Eddie Brock’s love interest.  There was nothing necessarily wrong with her performance however she wasn’t driving the plot forward or stealing any scenes either. The Venom character itself was good.  The CGI was done well and once the narrative started going that was also enjoyable.

Sony should be applauded for attempting this character again.  They knew fans would come in with expectations and doubts and still funded it anyway.  I question where they put that funding after some of the stunt scenes.  The close ups during some of the bike chase scenes clearly show a man who is not Tom Hardy driving.  So apparent they may as well gave the job to a black guy.  Venom got a bit corny at times, but not so much so that with all its faults you would call it a bad movie.  Venom should play well for a teen audience, seeing they cut a rumored 45 minutes out of the movie just so they could come see it without a guardian.  Hopefully the at home release will feature in some form the edited footage in hopes of elevating it’s quality.  Stick around for a great easter egg at the end of the initial credits.  It held on to half a star in its rating for that scene alone.  Venom didn’t fully redeem itself from a “Saturday Night Fever” strolling Peter Parker, but the effort can be appreciated and they are off to a decent start.