Spoilers Venom reviews and discussion

The reviews would have had to be absolutely stellar for me to think about seeing it at the cinema. Thankfully it doesn't look like I'll need to waste my time and money this time around.

 

Ditto. I never cared for the original "Hey, here's the real reason Peter Parker got a black costume...." that ultimately devolved into a intellligent 'evil' symbiot storyline. When tehy turned it into its own Villain, I was like - meh.

 

I haven't met a single Venom fan since the 90's... Why do the studios think this is a popular character??

 

Venom movie is being compared to Catwoman...

 

By like 2 people who are getting press coverage. Catwoman was 9% on RT. Venom is currently at 30%, which is actually better than BvS and Suicide Squad.

 

I wouldn’t listen to the reviews. For all we know it’s those pesky Russians again.

 

Venom is at 7.1/10 on IMDB, which is where normal people (as in, not critics) go to vote. Looks like to the untrained eye the movie is more average than terrible.

 

Thursday night box office. It made 10 million last night which is really good.

https://deadline.com/2018/10/venom-a-star-is-born-weekend-box-office-lady-gaga-1202476614/

 

I know all that.
I honestly don't know what I was thinking when I posted that, it was late, and I was only half paying attention to what I was writing.

 

There was not any communication between director Ruben Fleischer and anyone at Marvel Studios at all. This was was developed as a complete stand alone. However, they would like to be able to tie it into the MCU in the future.

https://screenrant.com/venom-movie-director-kevin-feige-mcu/

I read elsewhere that while there are no direct ties to the MCU, neither are there really any real contradictions. The only potential wrench in the works would be Eddie Brock's reluctance to believe in aliens.

 

And yet characters like Aunt May and Ned Leeds have appeared in Marvel Studios movies.

 

They're part of Spidey's core supporting cast, though, so they're probably part of the licensing deal in the way that guest characters like Venom or Silver Sable are not.

 

I would love to know exactly what the rules of all of this are. Are there specific characters that only Sony can use, and ones only Marvel can? Can they both pick and choose? Can they use the same ones?

 

Sony has the movie rights to the Spider-Man characters, period. The solo Spider-Man films are actually owned and released by Sony, just subcontracted to Marvel Studios for the creative and production side (much as Paramount subcontracts Bad Robot to make Star Trek and Mission: Impossible films). In exchange, Sony loans the Spider-Man character (and Aunt May and Ned, so far) to Marvel Studios for use in crossover films. Marvel can only use the Spidey-franchise characters that Sony agrees to loan them.

 

^ Exactly.

The fact that Sony retains control of the Spider-Man property means that they could have included the character - either played by Tom Holland or anorher actor - in Venom if they so chose, but opted not to.

 

I have some friends who wanted to see it today, and they asked me if I wanted to go with them. There are less painful ways of spending 2 hours. Although I don't think it's as bad as Catwoman or Fan4astic, it really wasn't very good.

I do have to agree with reviewers who said it felt like a generic 90s superhero movie. It's very rote, predictable and by the numbers in a way that reminded me of Daredevil, The Amazing Spider-Man movies and the Tim Story Fantastic Four.

Eddie Brock in this movie is a well-intentioned jerk. They tell us that he's a good reporter, but then they show him confronting Carlton Drake about dead test subjects without any actual evidence in his possession and all his knowledge on the subject he stole by breaking into his girlfriend's email, which gets her fired. Of course he gets fired and he deserved to get dumped. His inability to not touch things after being told not to touch them gets a major source on the Drake story killed.

While the relationship between Eddie and his symbiote is amusing at times, there is a lot of just plain atrocious dialogue (some of which we've seen in the trailers). I don't really understand what exactly caused the Venom symbiote to side with Humanity over his own people. He basically gets to the highest point in San Francisco, says "gee this is pretty. Maybe they're not so bad after all" (Paraphrasing) and that's it. I would have been more convinced by Venom's turn if it had turned out that Eddie and Venom's mother's were both named "Martha".

The story is all over the place and the pacing could use some work. All in all, a less than impressive effort. While it's true that there are no outright contradictions to MCU canon in this movie, and it even has a Stan Lee cameo, based on this debut effort I don't want Sony's Universe of Marvel Characters coming anywhere near the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

C-

 

This should not have been a superhero movie. It should've been a horror movie.

 

Agreed. And there were times when it felt like it wanted to be a horror movie but didn't want to commit to it. Like I said, the story was just all over the place.

 

Just back from seeing it, and I have seen a lot worse films. That said, it wasn't as good as it could have or should have been.

I too agree that they should have gone the horror route with it.

 

Projected weekend domestic gross is $80 million.