I was reluctant to watch Venom (2018) when it first came out. The trailers made it look like a hot mess that consisted of clunky CGI and annoying Transformer voice-overs sounding like they garbled rusty nails before recording the lines. One night, I decided to sit down and have a nice cold beer and watch it. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed it more than it probably deserves, but you know what? I had a good time. Tom Hardy played Eddie Brock with an interesting approach that was rather refreshing compared to Raimi’s take back in 2007 (I will be bringing this film up later on). That’s not to say there are not a lot of issues in the first entry, because there are plenty of glaring ones. The first being that the PG-13 rating of the film hindered quite a bit of its potential. But another one is the weird casting choice for a quick role near the end of the film. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t interesting to see Woody Harrelson, an actor whose work consistently piques my interest, getting cast to tease Venom’s sequel.
Look, I’m not the biggest comic book nerd, but I know damn well that teasing Carnage to be in the next film was huge news at the time. I remember sitting there, stunned, and even just a little bit excited to see him on the big screen. I remember playing the Spider-Man (2000) video game on the first generation of PlayStation, and Carnage was a boss that was extremely difficult to beat. His voice and maniacal laughter are both elements of his character that I recall to this day as he would chase you around and try to attack. He was terrifying.
Here’s the thing: I had more than enough apprehension at the casting of Woody Harrelson to play Carnage. What they showed at the end of 2018’s Venom came off as comical at best. It looked like they slapped a hilarious wig on him and said to act menacing by saying: “There’s going to be Carnage.” It’s not that the performance was awful, but that whole setup seemed like they half-assed production as a last-second thing to put in the movie. One could argue that it matches the goofiness of the rest of the film, and I suppose it does. But the goofiness is one of the glaring issues that I was hoping they would fix for the sequel, among other things. And you know what? Don’t get your hopes up. I was wrong.
Venom: Let There be Carnage doubles down on all the elements that made the first entry questionable and comically bad. The tone, the screenplay, and the overall execution with the buildup of Carnage and Venom going head-to-head is a very shattered journey that made me want to scream at more than just one point in the film. Instead of addressing the issues and saying, “Hey, let’s make Carnage who Carnage is meant to be: a terrifying, ultra-violent, menacing alien that will stop at nothing!” the studio executives decided to go with, “You know… Let’s tone him down and make him just semi-terrifying with lots of horrendous phallic-looking CGI to counterbalance the lack of character development we left out while trying to rush this into production because of MONEY!”
Not a lot went into developing any of the characters in this film. The only sequence to show an ounce of emotion is between Venom and Brock fighting each other, but even that is more comical than serious as it plays out like a breakup scene from a romantic movie. The fighting in that scene alone is better than anything that’s to come in the third act. It all felt out of place and acted as filler for a plot that is thinner than the (not so) symbiotic relationship between Carnage and Kasady. The film fails to address Shriek’s (Harris) backstory even though they opened up with a flashback relating to her and Kasady falling in love. The film doesn’t breathe much life into Kasady himself. And Harrelson and Harris have decent on-screen chemistry for the short amount of time we see them together, so it’s more than just a little disappointing that the film chooses to work against what works well with it.
There are plenty of moments that can be fleshed out to expand wants and needs, but all of that is thrown out the window with nonsense. Every single opportunity to address the very things that did not make the first entry work is flat-out ignored in this follow-up. Brock and Eddie are still just as annoying, and maybe even more unlikable, as they were in the first film. If you like the bickering of grown men who sound like they garbled marbles, then perhaps you might be amused. The attempted humor is something maybe a ten-year-old would find semi-funny at best. It goes back to another issue of the overall film having a sense of wanting to be darker, more sinister, and more action-packed. The constant jokes about eating heads and brains or the threats to cause mass carnage to the public (but not seeing it in action as the name would suggest) feel like temporary band-aid solutions to make the source material not as dark as it is by nature.
The vast majority of the performances and action sequences are undercut by the writing and the reliance on CGI. I understand they brought Andy Serkis on because of his experience with motion capture, but there are quite a few sequences that would make any Syfy-produced movie proud that it looks superior to what the outcome is in this flick. The whole third act is cluttered with scraps of CGI, loose plot ends, and a very rushed ending where the film just “ends” (save for the mid-credit scene). All I could think by the end was, “What even was the point of this movie in the first place?”
And not to bash on a film that’s not even related to the same film universe (yet), but a lot of it feels like Spider-Man 3 (2007) with the use of weird humor and overall, a weak, unsatisfying villain. Cletus Kasady has just about as much of an arc as Eddie Brock did in Sam Raimi’s take of Venom. Carnage is far from being terrifying. All the hype built for something on a grand scale came plummetting down when what we got was a sequel that was made purely for money and nothing else.
If you loved the first film, then sure, this may be right up your alley. While I merely enjoyed the first one (much to my surprise), I went in expecting something more, hoping the filmmakers fixed the glaring problems, and even then, I was lenient on what to expect. Yet, not even to a big surprise, Venom: Let There Be Carnage fails to bring Carnage any justice to the big screen. In the end, this feels like Sony is setting itself up for another Warner Brothers situation by ignoring any valid criticism just so they can make money and that’s it. And after that mid-credit scene, I can definitely say I am nervous about how they plan on moving forward.
