Toothy Movie (Venom Review, 2018)
Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy from Mad Max) is a freelance journalist, an American mix of entheveshnik and Navalny, who is engaged in high-profile independent investigations and reporting. Once he comes across information that the famous young visionary millionaire Drake, the Indian Elon Musk, is engaged not only in launching space ships into space, but also in strange experiments on living people. After all, one of his space shuttles just returned from the orbit of one of the comets with samples of alien life, but crashed over Malaysia, and one of the polymorphic substances leaked into one of the local people - and for some reason went to San Francisco, where the headquarters is located - Drake's apartment, as well as Eddie Brock himself, who, after a careless interview, lost his job and home, and even a girl, so that all at once. Naturally, drinking in cheap bars, chatting with homeless people and putting up with a lame rock guitarist-neighbor, he will not be long, because for each hero there is a symbiote.
A deafeningly stupid and awkward film, which, nevertheless, can be enjoyed if you hammer your inner critic with something heavy. This is the story of a strange friendship between a principled, honest person and an unprincipled alien hooligan, one of whom constantly wants to eat and do nasty things, and the other - to fight for justice not with fists, but with media coverage. But they need each other and inevitably they have to work together to stop the villain - another symbiote who is slowly, slowly walking from the other end of the world to the local Elon Musk in order to capture his rocket, return to the comet, capture other friends and return to take over an Earth full of wonderful host organisms that are so delicious to eat. Naturally, he won't get a damn thing, but good will surely pile on evil, break all his bones and, in addition, explode with a blue flame, so that it is discouraging.
No, the very idea of the film is interesting. If we abstract from the fact that this is a film about the villain of the Spider-Man world in the film, where there is no Spider-Man and other superheroes in general (which is realistic). Alien life that looks like a messy, almost fractal self-organizing slime, vaguely reminiscent of the monster from "Something" - it's cool. Origin from some kind of comet - okay, there is a hypothesis of panspermia, according to which life on Earth was brought precisely from space by meteorites and comets (organic compounds are found in comets). Mutually beneficial symbiosis of organisms - this also happens quite often, even between species that are completely different from each other - for example, there is a special type of fungus that affects the nervous system of an ant, germinating into its body, and takes it under control, a real, unthinkable symbiote. It is quite possible to imagine that somewhere in the universe there could be a whole world of such creatures living in symbiosis with carrier bodies, beneficial for both species, so as not to die out. Venom in the film behaves exactly this way: it uses the character of Tom Hardy as an endoskeleton (by analogy with an exoskeleton, like an Iron Man suit, but vice versa), heals any damage to it, it seems, at the cellular level (given how easily the symbiote penetrates through clothing, the particles of his body are very small and look like nano-particles), but at the same time it feeds on the internal organs of the wearer, if aggression does not rush out. An interesting idea, in fact, very much. It would be possible to come up with very interesting situations with such input data, to make the conflicts and the general plot stronger. Make a bigger bias in sci-fi horror, albeit with humorous notes (the jokes in the film are very appropriate, and the interaction between Brock and Venom is always interesting to follow). Come up with something less banal than "I will bring my friends and we will destroy this tasty world" and "I will not let you do this, heroism and self-sacrifice awoke in me." Although it's funny - it turns out that selfishness pushes Venom to battle against the evil and powerful, but not memorable by the nature of Riot. He does not want his relatives to come to Earth, because he is happy here alone, and he does not want to share toys and prey. It differs from its relatives, one carrier is enough for it and it is not so bloodthirsty, at least. It turns out that Venom is a dysfunctional individual, such do not survive in natural selection. (I wonder how symbiotes reproduce?)
In general, the motivation of the heroes is a really weak spot.
If everything is clear with the hero of Tone Hardy (he constantly freaks out and tries to get used to the tentacles growing from different places and the inner voice calling to EAT), then the villain is just some kind of idiot. Indian Elon Musk believes that global warming (not directly mentioned, but still), overpopulation and the consumption crisis will kill humanity in one generation. Firstly, global warming is at least an ambiguous thing associated with political lobbying, everything is not so simple there. Secondly, unlike bad Hollywood films, in reality no one is seriously talking about the fact that humanity is doomed to extinction, and even more so, in such a short time. This is just nonsense. Yes, the climate on Earth changes over time, and anthropogenic activity also affects this, and it is quite possible that in a hundred years in conditional Saudi Arabia it will be so hot that it will be impossible to live there (there are such forecasts) or that Venice, London and New York will be flooded for 200 years - anything is possible. But won't we come up with anything to resist the elements? This is not "The Day After Tomorrow" or that film with the ubiquitous Gerald Buttler about climate weapons - disasters of this magnitude do not happen instantly. We, Cro-Magnon people, survived the great ice age on a par with the Neanderthals (the fact that this side branch of evolution became extinct later is another story), so we are definitely not in danger of instant extinction, do not listen to charlatans. Even dinosaurs did not die out quickly, and the Earth itself - in its entire history there have been several great extinctions abruptly the biblical Flood, when 90% of all species died, but the ball is still spinning.
Another nonsense that often sounds in general in this kind of films (for example, in "Avengers 2: Age of Ultron") - "People are slowly evolving, - God, burn'em."
That's bullshit.
Evolution is not a fast process and it never stops. For example, South and North Korea - did you know how different the inhabitants of this country divided during the Cold War are? North Koreans living with dire food shortages, hunger and constant mobilization against a fictional external enemy are, on average, shorter than the more prosperous, tech-savvy South Koreans. Even their languages are very different! (Southern Korean has many Anglicisms, while North Korean has more local names and, for example, does not have the word "ice cream"). Evolution never stops, "life" means "evolution" and it cannot be too slow. Fast - maybe slow - no. So Drake is an idiot at the level of a cartoon villain on Nikelodeon when he says "Humanity is dying out, and only the fusion of symbiote and human will save our species." It would be better to breed hybrids of people and alien spooky thingies as living weapons, as in "Aliens" and "Prometheus".
The main female character of "Venom", Annie, is also a fool. Her presence in the plot is purely functional. It is only needed in order to drop the main character at the beginning (and how to quit! Alright - and that's it, change, Eddie, your Facebook status from "Engaged, wedding soon" to "It's complicated, I drink hard"), and then "accidentally "collide with him, warm up to him and eventually rescue him in a tense moment. Well, at least not "a lady in trouble", as in a thousand other films, is already good. But her character seemed to me at least flat and undisclosed. If he offended you so much with his "subscribe to our channel, they tell the truth", because of which you both were thrown out of work, - why did you forgive him so quickly when he came to you with a crooked face and said what -that rubbish picked up and is about to die, probably, but it's not accurate?
The special effects in the film are good, by the way. Especially when the symbiote is shown in its natural form - cool, persuasive alien goo in constant motion. Tentacles / blades / stakes from all sorts of places - cool. The jumping and acrobatics of Tom Hardy, who is always sweaty and fucking with his own coolness, is funny. Talking with a toothy head from your own hand - not really, some kind of "Adventure Time". The final battle of the two monsters - sometimes cool and sometimes even frightening, you can feel the power and weight of the creatures themselves, but they move too fast, and the destruction they cause is too large-scale for such speed … in general, a lot has been said about the so-called. "pixel action" in big and mass cinema, when everything happens too quickly and the scenes drawn on computers, although they look stunning, often seem completely unconvincing - films of the 2000s, with which "Venom" is often compared, often sinned openly with computer scenes duels ("Blade", "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", "Catwoman"). Then it was still a relatively new field of cinema effects and CG tools were not so perfect, but now, when digital doubles of actors are used not only in the same action scenes ("The Matrix Reloaded"), but also as full-color characters in the first roles, where the actors who played these roles are either already too old or completely dead (young Princess Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin from the movie "Star Wars: Rogue One") - now for some reason many final battles in action science fiction films do not look very strong better than a movie of the era of "The Lord of the Rings" (with all due respect to the latter). Everything is too fast, too easy, too … drawn. In films like the "Age of Ultron" or, for example, "Black Panther", one does not really believe in hordes of robots or battle rhinos that threaten the main characters or their enemies.
Directing … competent, camera work - good. In combat scenes, at least you can see who is where, who and from where. For our times ("GodmoetJaysonborn!") Is already excellent. The music is just super, like one of the elements of the film. Frightening, viscous, powerful. The composer of "Black Panther" has done an excellent job. A nice bonus - the song of the same name by rapper Eminem from his last album, sounding in the credits of the film, as well as a very angry and rhythmic composition of the hip-hop masters Run The Jewels (they once released an excellent video with the heroes of the animated series "Rick and Morty").
In general, not too good film, built according to the standards of a typical superhero movie, only with a hooligan anti-hero at the head, who lives in the body, deliberately a positive guy who was robbed of everything and he would have been drinking in his rented apartment, if not for a chance meeting …
"A reluctant hero", "a good bad guy", "a megalomaniac villain", "a lady-in-trouble is not in trouble", good special effects on not very good special effects, a silly story with good actors and some 'kool musik'.
If you turn off your head, do not ask questions and, in general, turn off your head for a little over two hours, occupying it with popcorn and cola, then the cinema is nothing. Walkthrough film, but not boring (if you survive the first hour). He has been in production for a very long time (since the time of the third "Spider-Man" Sam Raimi), changed a bunch of scripts, directors and actors, and the production hell rarely goes painless for a picture. So it's good that a film about such an unusual comic book hero has reached us, albeit in this form. Comics are the same myths, only today. Heroes, villains, some kind of rudimentary, but archetypal stories. It's not bad at all. Of course, someday superhero cinema will bend in the same way as westerns and ash did. But while they are with us and are still blowing up the box office, let's watch them and have fun.
Venom, (I got that) adrenaline momentum
And I'm not knowin' when I'm
Ever gonna slow up and I'm
Ready to snap any moment I'm
Thinkin' it's time to go get 'em
They ain't gonna know what hit 'em
(W-W-When they get bit with the—)
Venom, (I got that) adrenaline momentum
And I'm not knowin' when I'm
Ever gonna slow up and I'm
Ready to snap any moment I'm
Thinkin' it's time to go get 'em
They ain't gonna know what hit 'em
(W-W-When they get bit with the—)
Venom
Eminem - Venom (Used in OST of the movie)