Venom Is a Waste of Tom Hardy's Talent and Your Time According to Reviews

cageymaru

cageymaru

Fully [H]
Joined
Apr 10, 2003
Messages
21,912
Reviewers are panning the release of Venom according to BGR. Comments from reviewers range from very harsh to average for the most part. According to Owen Gleiberman of Variety, "As anyone who saw his silky and cutting performance in "Locke" can attest, Tom Hardy is one of the smartest actors around. So why, in "Venom," does it seem like he's doing his impersonation of a benignly inarticulate stoner clown who's only got half his marbles?" Who here is going to see the film?

But you don't have to take the Tomatometer's word for it. Below, we rounded up a selection of reviews, both positive and negative, to give you an idea of how the movie is being received by a wide variety of critics
 
https://screenrant.com/venom-lady-gaga-fans-trolling-bad-reviews/

Lady Gaga fans are trolling Venom with poor reviews online in an effort to generate a larger audience for A Star is Born. Both films open in theaters this weekend and look to be headed towards very different destinies.
Click to expand...

I can't find the article I read earlier but it showed multiple users with the exact same reviews word for word.

Edit: I should have looked more closely as the article I initially read is linked in my above link:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/krishrach/venom-a-star-is-born-twitter-stans-review
 
Last edited:
I think the story of venom could be pulled off very nicely. The only problem for me though is creating a believable venom that looks good. I'm on the fence regarding this one. Tom Hardy definitely could pull it off, just comes down to how well the cgi looks and feels.
 
Hard R or it's a hard pass...

tenor.gif
 
I pretty much believe these bad reviews when it comes to super hero movies. Too many movies, not enough time. I'll def check it out when it becomes available for download.

Where there is smoke, there is fire. If it was great, then we would not be hearing any negativity at all. Zilch, zero.

And I really like Tom Hardy. He was amazing in Warrior. Not so amazing in the movie where he is in a car the entire MF time hahaha ... can't believe I sat thru that entire movie.
 
Not that it was a day one movie for me but I am hoping to at least be entertained for awhile when I decide to see it. I was not sure if it would be of the same caliber as any of the Avengers movies.
 
just saw it tonight (Thanks pepsi and lipton)... our family thought it was a good movie. :)
 
It's a comic book movie from Sony. Of course it's going to be either bad or just feel very dated. The trailers were not good. The dialog was not good. Even in the trailers the CG looked horrid. Disney tends to monopolize the time of most of the top effects houses around the world these days, but I find it hard to believe that companies like Sony Pictures and WB can't find better talent then they have creating CG on their superhero flicks. Into the Spider-Verse is the only CB movie from Sony in the last 14 years to look good and I'm still expecting to Sony to fuck that one up somehow too.
 
KazeoHin said:
take a brutal character who's not even moral enough to be an anti-hero, who literally eats people and tears them apart...




and give it a PG13. SURE. This was going to be a home-run!
Click to expand...

Venom has been an anti-hero for years and Lethal Protector arc this movie is loosely based on is actually one of his decent Anti-Hero arcs. Though, even getting that story remotely close would require the two things Sony didn't want: A R rating and Spider-Man. The only way to even do a decent PG-13 Spidy-less Venom story would be to go down the Agent Venom path.
 
Dan_D said:
Film critics are so far disconnected from the public that any of their statements can be safely ignored. You'll be better off trusting people you know who will take the plunge and see the film before you do.
Click to expand...

uh... the general public are lemmings. If the marketing can convince these lemmings to buy tickets, that is how it will succeed. Heck, the jurassic world movies are HORRIBLE.. yet they both made $$$
 
hesho said:
uh... the general public are lemmings. If the marketing can convince these lemmings to buy tickets, that is how it will succeed. Heck, the jurassic world movies are HORRIBLE.. yet they both made $$$
Click to expand...

Eh. The first Jurassic World was okay. It was a fun, mindless, action movie that knew how to keep the audience engaged and didn't overstay it's welcome. Fallen Kingdom on the other hand...It might actually be worse than Jurassic Park 3.
 
I learned a long time ago that the critics and I don't have the same taste in movies. I'll probably go see this one when I get a chance, probably next weekend.
 
Other than maybe Batman I'm not interested in Superhero / Supervillian comic book movies.
 
Rotten Tomatoes: 25%

Metacritic: 33/100


Written Reviews:

Chicago Tribune - Katie Walsh

Hardy and Fleischer do manage to reel it back to that bizarre but charming tone they've created, and amazingly, for all of the wild weirdness and wackadoo mess, this character is, shockingly, one we'd be happy to spend more time with, thanks to Hardy.

Collider - Perri Nemiroff

Bear with me here; Venom the movie is an actual “turd in the wind.” Chop off its legs thanks to a weak first act. Lose the arms because every single supporting character is essentially worthless. The head obviously has to go because Venom is pretty brainless. And, not for nothing, but that leaves us with the heart (or for the sake of this visual, the torso) of the movie, the Venom and Eddie relationship, a component that’s just going where the wind takes us in this downright wacky comic book adaptation.

Entertainment Weekly - Chris Nashawaty

Venom isn’t quite bad, but it’s not exactly good either. It’s noncommittally mediocre and, as a result, forgettable. It just sort of sits there, beating you numb, unsure of whether it wants to be a comic-book movie or put the whole idea of comic-book movies in its crosshairs.

Forbes - Scott Mendelson

The most surprising thing about Venom (opening worldwide this week) is that it’s relatively unassuming. The long-in-development solo flick for one of the more popular Spider-Man baddies is clearly a picture born of compromise, one that is torn between the desire to be taken seriously as a respectable comic book superhero movie and a competing desire to openly make fun of itself. Warts and all, it stands on its own two-feet and tells a self-contained story that doesn’t make you wait for the sequel and doesn’t operate as a backdoor pilot for Sony’s alleged Spider-Verse spin-offs. As both a shameless cash-in and a knowing ode to some of the lesser post-Blade and pre-Iron Man comic book flicks, it’s at its best when it embraces its own inherent stupidity.

The Guardian - Peter Bradshaw

Can Tom Hardy play comedy – intentionally? The question remains worryingly unanswered in this clumsy, monolithic and fantastically boring superhero movie-slash-entertainment-franchise-iteration. 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.

Los Angeles Times - Justin Chang

Directed with flat, joyless competence by Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland,” “Gangster Squad”), “Venom” brings with it a laborious, decades-spanning development history. A movie this long in the works should arrive on-screen feeling like more than just an afterthought. But next to the much more visually and narratively elaborate entertainments that make up the Marvel Cinematic Universe — or even compared with other snarky anti-superhero movies like “Deadpool” — “Venom” feels like pretty weak poison.

The Hollywood Reporter - Todd McCarthy

A significant problem in a film full of them is that Eddie comes off as a dope, an eager doofus hardly convincing as a boundary-pushing journo or someone who can out-think a titan of technology. Whatever his shortcomings as a journalist or a mate, the character needed a deep repository of intelligence and resourcefulness that is nowhere detectable; he's all Basset Hound and no German Shepherd. Hardy has always had a terrific screen bearing and presence, but this may be his least interesting role and performance.

IGN - Laura Prudom

Sadly, Venom suffers from the same lack of cohesion and rejects everything that might’ve turned it into a badass joyride in the vein of Deadpool or Guardians of the Galaxy. The result is a muddled hodgepodge that isn’t sure whether it wants to be comedic or take its troubled antihero way too seriously.

Indiewire - Michael Nordine

“Venom” is very much its own entity — one in which, for better or worse, a parasitic alien calls its host a pussy for deciding to take the elevator instead of jumping off a skyscraper and Tom Hardy jumps into a lobster tank in the middle of a crowded restaurant. This leaves the viewer with two choices: reject the parasite or let it take you over. Fight it off and you’ll have a bad time; become one with it and you may achieve a kind of symbiosis.

ScreenCrush - Matt Singer

Once Tom Hardy bonds with this alien “symbiote,” and this goo begins to talk to him as a gravelly voice in his head (also performed by Hardy), Venom suddenly becomes hilarious. Hardy and his evil side trade insults. They get into slapstick fights with bad guys where Venom marionettes Tom Hardy’s body like a puppet. They eat inexplicable amounts of tater tots. It’s like if Laurel and Hardy were the same guy — and also one of them liked to bite the heads off people This is epically, fantastically weird stuff. The only thing stopping this movie from becoming an immediate cult classic is that it takes nearly an hour for Tom Hardy to go full Venom. If they’d trimmed 15 minutes out of this thing, cut right to the chase, and just piled on the Hardy, Venom would be unmissable Oh, that first hour. It is bad. Not fun bad. Not so-bad-it’s-good-bad. Just painful.

The Telegraph - Robbie Collin

Perhaps the hardest thing to process about Venom – and allow me to warn you that this is not an easy film to process in general – is the sheer ugliness of Venom himself. 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 with Creme Egg filling onto a bin bag.

Uproxx - Mike Ryan

Now, I do want to make it clear that I think Venom is not a good movie, but I also want to make it clear that I had the time of my life watching it. I think in a couple of years Venom could be the type of movie that sells out midnight showings as people come up to the screen and act out their favorite parts – like a Rocky Horror Picture Show type of thing. My point is, if you’re in the right group and right frame of mind, Venom is really fun to watch.

Variety - Owen Gleiberman

“Venom” is a textbook case of a comic-book film that’s unexciting in its ho-hum competence, and even its visual-effects bravura. Make no mistake: The effects can be dazzling. The alien matter splattering itself around like random tentacled liquid, the way Venom cross-breeds Spider-Man’s skyscraper-hopping agility with the Hulk’s dynamo destructiveness — it’s all diverting eye candy. But to what end? This gateway into the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters (get ready: there are 90!) may not sputter as badly as Tom Cruise’s “The Mummy,” but it could turn out to be a similar case of a franchise kickoff that doesn’t fully attain franchise liftoff.

The Verge - Bryan Bishop

But in its finished form, Venom is PG-13, more devoted to humor than the more disturbing aspects of the lead character. As Eddie grapples with the symbiote infection, he parades through jokey sequences filled with physical comedy. Eddie can’t stop eating tater tots! Eddie Venoms-out at his electric guitar-playing neighbor! Eddie sits in a lobster tank in a fancy restaurant — before eating a lobster live! The film is utterly dissonant, recalling the weird camp of Batman & Robin, which illustrates a fundamental conflict between the presentation of what the Venom symbiote is and does and the filmmakers’ efforts to turn his story into a Deadpool-esque laugh riot.

The Wrap - Alonso Duralde

The neither-here-nor-there plotting is matched by the wispiness of the characters, who rarely seem to have clear-cut motivations or anything resembling depth. And that’s what makes this film such an egregious misuse of a fine ensemble. Hardy is always mesmerizing, even when the material is less so, but in “Venom” he’s finally found a project he can’t overcome by sheer talent.

At this rate, I don't even think getting high to watch to this movie will even save it for me.
 
Last edited:
hesho said:
uh... the general public are lemmings. If the marketing can convince these lemmings to buy tickets, that is how it will succeed. Heck, the jurassic world movies are HORRIBLE.. yet they both made $$$
Click to expand...

The critics loved The Last Jedi and Star Wars fans fucking hated it. We have been seeing increasing disconnects between the viewing public and the critics. Frankly, I don't care if the public are lemmings or not. I frequently find that I don't agree with professional film reviewers on hardly any films that I'd be interested in the first place. I'll stick with the "i don't give a fuck what critics say" policy when it comes to choosing what films to watch and which ones to ignore. I don't always agree with my fellow lemmings either. I hated a lot of those summer blockbuster films like Independence Day, Air Force One, Jurassic Anything, and so on. Many people thought that Black Panther was the greatest super hero movie ever, and while good I think it was vastly overrated.

Obviously, taste in film is all subjective. The longer I've been alive the more disconnect I've seen between reviewers and the general movie going audience. As far as I'm concerned the reviewers have been an increasingly bad barometer for what's good for decades.
 
Dan_D said:
The critics loved The Last Jedi and Star Wars fans fucking hated it. We have been seeing increasing disconnects between the viewing public and the critics.
Click to expand...
First off there has almost always been a disconnect between critics and the everyday person everything from movies to food,l.

Second, your first sentence is not mutually exclusive to the second, "Star Wars fans are not a good representation of the viewing public, the much like critics are going to be hyper critical of the most inane details.
 
sfsuphysics said:
First off there has almost always been a disconnect between critics and the everyday person everything from movies to food,l.

Second, your first sentence is not mutually exclusive to the second, "Star Wars fans are not a good representation of the viewing public, the much like critics are going to be hyper critical of the most inane details.
Click to expand...

I realize there has always been a disconnect between critics and the viewing public. However, my point is that I've seen that gap grow more and more over the years to the point where there is almost no common ground. Star Wars fans are pretty apologetic about the movies and put up with a lot of shit because they love the franchise. Even the regular masses who aren't avid fans were all let down by the film. Only critics seemed to have liked the movie. TLJ did one thing and only one thing right. It was entirely unpredictable. Unfortunately, it was unpredictable because no one could have imaged the events of the film playing out so badly, illogically and with such stupidity. The lack of care on the part of the filmmakers for the universe, characters and even the fans (who are customers and consumers of the product) is absolutely astounding.

You can't even say critics are concerned about inane details. I think they have moved to a point where they care far more about whatever agenda a film is trying to push than they care about the content of the movie. Using TLJ as an example, the whole space ship chase scene is retarded to anyone who has any grasp of 5th grade level physics. The lack of logic used in the film and the inane story and anticlimactic scenes are something so blatant that the critics should agree with the general public or even the Star Wars fans. TLJ sucked. Its basically as bad as the Wing Commander movie in all the same ways excluding the visual effects.
 
I seldom rely on reviewers nowadays. I find a bunch of movies that had very low scored good, some great but not awesome. This made me more convinced that there might be some reviewers who were paid to smash these movies. Well I'm not an A grade movie lover, but heck I think my tastes are not that bad.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rahh
like this
dyzophoria said:
I seldom rely on reviewers nowadays. I find a bunch of movies that had very low scored good, some great but not awesome. This made me more convinced that there might be some reviewers who were paid to smash these movies. Well I'm not an A grade movie lover, but heck I think my tastes are not that bad.
Click to expand...

I look at movie reviews the same way I do game reviews. As a way to get a general feel for the tone of a movie in comparison to the marketing. I don't put much stock in review comments on acting or things like that, but I can usually get a feel for how I will take to something based on some of those thoughts. In the case of Venom, with so many reviews talking about it feeling like a 10-15 year old movie and making comparisons to Ang Lee's Hulk, Incredible Hulk, and Afleck's Daredevil I can pretty easily assume, especially combined with the horrible marketing, that I'm not going to like it and will probably find it to be trash. The method tends to work better with games than movies, but it works well enough.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Ty for your honesty. Great gets my money, good gets my download bandwidth.
Click to expand...
You can basically see the movie for $0.75 via Atom tickets. It's worth that much at least.

https://slickdeals.net/f/12103363-atom-tickets-new-customers-50-off-first-movie-ticket?src=frontpage
https://www.amazon.com/adlp/venommovie

If you link your Amazon account to Atom, you get $5 off. If you haven't already linked your Amazon account, then it creates a new account that can use the 50% off code.
 
As a hardcore Spider-man fan in the 80s and 90s, Venom was never hard R. Maybe they turned him into a blood thirsty nut in newer comics but my Venom could easily get away with PG-13.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top