Venom: Rotten to the Core

No kidding. Venom hurt me so much I didn’t even know if I could write this.

Marvel, what have you done?

One of the best things bout Marvel movies is that they set up characterizations, so that we are invested in the main leads.

Heck, we even loved Loki.

There are just likable traits in even the worst villains.

Sadly, that isn’t the case with Eddie Brock.

The first half of the movie made me want to cry, and not in the I was touched by how good this was kind of cry.

We were introduced to Eddie Brock, a journalist who loved taking risks and exposing bad people for crazy stuff they did. He was happily engaged to Annie Weying, and he was living the good life.

Then one day he was assigned to interview a powerful man of Life Foundation, Carlton Drake, who got a lot of dead bodies stacking up in his labs for research purposes. Literally. Eddie was warned and begged to not do anything crazy, as Drake was a very powerful man who could ruin everyone’s life.

So he did what he thought was right. He took confidential information from Annie and used it against Drake during their interview.

This resulted in both Eddie and Annie losing their jobs, and Annie ending things with Eddie.

Six months later, Eddie ran into one of Drake’s scientists who asked him for help and took him to Drake’s labs.

There, Eddie ended up being attacked and having a symbiote, an alien symbiotic lifeform, enter his system and become a parasite.

And this symbiote, makes Venom, started becoming an ally Eddie never thought he’d ever want.

Alright, so that’s pretty much it. Seriously, it’s pretty much it.

The character development in this movie is so questionable that I gave up midway. Eddie is a selfish privileged man who doesn’t care about other people, nor does he listen to them. He does what he wants and then blames it on someone else when things fall apart.

I’m never a big fan of characters like that, to be honest. At the very least, redeem him well, please.

The one guy I actually like is Carlton Drake, and even his characterization is poorly written. I do find myself more invested in his character, and I was actually curious to see what else he got planned.

I’d rather watch a movie about him than Eddie. And that says a lot.

The first half of the movie hurt me, badly. And then things got better in the second half. So in that sense, it wasn’t that bad.

And they did have fun with the whole evil but manageable theme. They established a good partnership, believable enough, between the main protagonist and its parasite.

So I could see myself watch some random episodes of Venom if it ever became a show. However, as a movie it just fell flat.

I expected great things from Venom, and I’m not calling this horrible, but it could’ve done a lot better.

Venom is a 5/10 for me. I’d just tell people to read the synopsis. But if you’re really that curious and got nothing to lose, go for it. It could be entertaining as long as you don’t walk out the first half.