Venom (2018) - Official Trailer 2 Reaction
Despite salvaging its train-wreck of a teaser trailer with a decent-ish (until you start to think about it) proper trailer a few months ago, 'Venom' seems to be back on the speeding train heading towards a wreckage with this latest trailer. Ruben Fleischer appears to have made an angst, edgy film that seems to determined to show off how cool and badass and adult it is that it comes across as a cringe-worthy thirteen year old's idea of a Spider-Man spin-off film. "We'll eat your arms and your face and your organs and your legs and then you'll be all dismembered and I'll seem all cool and badass" says Venom at one point in the trailer. Sort of.
It shows a complete lack of appreciation for the Spider-Man universe in general. The appeal of Spider-Man is how down-to-earth the character and his struggles are, and how outlandish and colourful his villains are. Sure, Venom and by extension Carnage have always been the darker, more violent antagonists, but work in contrast with how bright and chirpy Spidey is. In 'Venom', we don't have that contrast. We just have edge-lord Venom running around thinking he's cool because he's not like a proper superhero. Do Sony think that the superhero genre is dying? Do they think that it's being mocked by the film industry at large? Did they see how much money 'Black Panther' made? Hell, did they see how much 'Avengers: Infinity War' made? Even 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' is the second most successful Spidey flick out of the lot. Why do they think that making Venom such an anti-hero will sell the film to an audience that loves superheroes?
"Yeah, but why do you care so much Pete?"
Because I actually like Venom as a character, as the antithesis of Spider-Man. And I want to see a really awesome Spider-Man movie someday where Peter Parker has to overcome his demons through the symbiote suit and realise what it actually means to be Spider-Man. I wanna see that story done well, and not mishandled by a director who didn't like Venom in the first place (not that I have anything against Sam Raimi - the guy is a legend). 'Venom' is not that movie. Not even close.
How bad does 'Venom' look? Well, for one the colour palette is still abysmal, relying on that cold blue tint and an emphasis on night-time photography. Venom itself looked okay in the last trailer, but getting to see it in action here, it just looks fake as anything. The full design looks bland as sin without that giant white spider design on his chest, and the motion-capture on the face doesn't look great either. That shot near the end with half of Tom Hardy's face and half of Venom's looks pretty poor given it's meant to be a cool money shot, and the moment where Venom faces off against...evil Venom (I'm sure its probably Riot or something) is frankly awful. Black symbiote creature fighting dark grey symbiote creature? At night?? Who on earth thought that was a good idea??? At least Carnage would be a reddish-purple colour and stick out. That final fight is going to be messy as anything.
I already joked about how terrible the dialogue is, but I hate the shot of Venom's face pulling out of Tom Hardy to have a chat with him. Ruben Fleischer couldn't even be bothered to create some cool mind-scape for Eddie Brock and Venom to communicate with one another. Not to mention that Venom's voice is so deep and over-modulated that you barely understand what he's saying at many points throughout the trailer. Also, is it me or does Tom Hardy's opening narration sound really awkward? Oh yeah, and the trailer music's pretty generic "dark" underscoring.
So what do I actually like about 'Venom'? Well, I think it's a bad idea, a rather generic story, a pretty naff-looking film considering how much must've been spent on it, and given the caliber of some of the cast (Tom Hardy, Riz Ahmed, Michelle Williams, Woody Harrelson), I wouldn't be surprised if there's some phoned-in performances in there. The action could go either way - none of it based on this trailer looks good, but a lot of films save on the action set-pieces for the final film - but the whole thing just feels like a horribly misguided attempt from Sony Pictures to expand their most reliable IP into a sprawling multi-billion dollar franchise that no one wants. I'm happy to watch more Spider-Man films. I'm happy to watch a Spider-Man film featuring Venom, and if that's any good, I'll even watch a spin-off from that movie centered around Venom. But this is a film with no reason to exist other than to just be some awkwardly edgy and "adult" flick about the anti-hero everyone thought was underutilised in 'Spider-Man 3'.
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