Click here to read VENOM: Not Five, Just a Deadly One.
In the before times of 2018 when the previous film came out, going to the movies was a much simpler prospect. Surely one wouldn’t call it a more innocent time, but the October of 2018 was scary in a very different way than the October of 2021 looks to be. A fear folks will surely be contending with will be the fear of other people now. Someone out there is probably thinking “Is this movie worth risking my life for that theater experience?” Even masked, double-masked and in reserved seats it’s a question worth asking of any movie now. Same day downloads have become normalized, and no vaccine is effective against a crazed gunman, last seen at a showing of THE FOREVER PURGE in Southern California this past July.
Is Catching VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE Worth the Risk?
Looking back, our 2018 KungFuMagazine review of VENOM was quite comprehensive. We covered both the secret marketing plans behind the original costume change for Spider-Man (nearly a monthly occurrence). We also pointed out the 90’s era cool factor for antiheroes which also punished comics readers with Cable, Deadpool, Spawn and that psychopath who uses a certain skull for a logo. In a couple of cases, their movie adaptations proved better written than the original books themselves. In other cases, not. But the 90’s also gave comics HELLBOY who’s most recent cinematic adaptation proved that even the best source material can be body-slammed into submission in the hands of the right or wrong creative team.
We also covered SONY’s big plans for a shared cinematic universe on par with the MCU. With the colossal success of SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (2018), it seemed plausible that VENOM could successfully move their agenda forward. It was a pleasant surprise to find that the original film installment was adequately entertaining, however its success may have rested more in its marketing plan than its entertainment quality.
KungFuMagazine has covered the Warcraft Redemption since the release of Duncan Jones’ WARCRAFT (2016) which, while entertaining for some, would have flopped had Chinese audiences not come to its rescue like a charging cavalry. A handful of other movies proved this could be repeated, and by the time VENOM was approaching markets there was a specific plan in the works.
Sure, people these days (and those days as well) are eager for a good dose of Schadenfreude. It’s not just Chinese movie goers who enjoyed handsome, fit, and charismatic Tom Hardy be brutalized by a literally physical manifestation of his id. Maybe it was the framing of a Silicon Valley tech-guru as villain or the presentation of an American police detective as incompetent that won audiences over. But maybe, as with the property’s other success, it was the result of a slick marketing plan.
Astonishingly VENOM opened second only to AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (2018) with a $111 million debut weekend in China. At the time, it was also reported to be the country’s fifth highest opening for an imported movie. A brief look at some of the marketing images used to promote the movie in China might have you thinking they leaned hard into the romantic comedy vibe. Eddie Brock may be a handsome American but to quote one of Venom’s best lines of the first movie, “You’re a loser, Eddie Brock.” What a perfect formula for a date night – watch the leading man fail to get the girl and walk your date home secure in the knowledge that your most base drives will not spontaneously manifest as a symbol of America’s rapacious capitalist hunger.
Its sequel, which was very consciously set up at the original movie’s close, has been slow in arriving. With only a couple of trailers to hint at what has been in the works, SONY has lost nearly all momentum in what we might as well consider its ‘Phase 2.’ Added to that challenge VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE must contend with reigning box-office Champion SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS.
Tragically, KungFuMagazine was unable to cover SHANG-CHI. Despite covering many a Marvel movie and paying close attention to its development over the years on our Martial Media subforum, an invitation to review that feature went elsewhere. Accordingly, a review of SHANG-CHI from a mostly-strictly Kung Fu perspective can be seen on the new online series The Comics Fu Show - co-hosted by yours truly.
If, on the unlikely chance, VENOM wrestles box-office control from the Marvel’s Kung-fu-grip, it has only a week to make back its money. The final chapter to Daniel Craig’s James Bond pentalogyNO TIME TO DIE hits theaters the week after and everyone has been wanting to see how that turns out. Those are high stakes for this movie and there’s really no other way to handle it but to invite the franchise’s own Hannibal Lecter to the table.
Tastes Just Like Chicken
Played by Woody Harrelson, the villain character of VENOM, Cletus Kasady, was created by writer David Michelinie and artist Mark Bagley.Briefly named Ravage, and later Chaos, this character (term applied loosely) was ultimately called Carnage. What was it with the 90’s and these single now names? Carnage, Cable, Rage, Spawn, Venom, Zealot, the list goes on and we haven’t started on those with a prefix of Death/Dead or Blood. I mention this because beyond the Hannibal Lector-esque “He’s a cannibal psychopath” the character’s only other defining characteristic is that he’s a red symbiote.
Woody Harrelson is likable and a dedicated actor. He does his best with what he’s given. This comes through in his telling of his not-so-secret origin which is accompanied by an animated sequence. This is probably the height of the movie’s artistic vision. Sure, there are some other shots which call to mind the old-school Universal Monsters and when the movie leans into that overwrought gothic pulp it’s fun, but all to quickly it falls back on slapstick cliches. Who needs to watch another messy breakfast scene?
With the collapse of Universal Studio’s monster universe (anyone remember 2014’s DRACULA: UNTOLD?) VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE could have found a place as a pulpy horror. A super-powered serial killer could have easily endeared this movie to the slasher film crowd. But with its PG-13 rating it could not go there either. Just like it’s fictionalized San Francisco setting (not the same city as where I saw the movie at), the stock footage looked nice but so much of the movie takes place indoors, and in generic locals, prisons, warehouses, inordinately-spacious-live-work-apartments that the setting is as personality free as the characters. They were going for SILENCE OF THE LAMBS but ended up with NATURAL BORN KILLER, minus any drug-fueled authorial voice.
But What About the Fight Scenes?
This is KungFuMagazine after all. When the movie isn’t satisfying, we fast forward to the fight scenes. Stuntman and indie film-maker George Kirby is the fight coordinator for VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE. Do not confuse him with the significantly older Jujitsu Champion of the same name. Could they be related? Perhaps. Clearly Kirby the younger has a love for the martial arts and the astute viewer will notice the use of a Da Dao and Jian among the various short movies he’s self-produced.
But it’s no easy task to choreograph fight scenes for barely humanoid CG combatants, so George was left to make police look terribly incompetent (thanks for that!) and to help Shriek (Naomie Harris) look menacing. Good effort there! Harris is undeniably the strongest force in this movie. She’s barely recognizable, vanishing into an intimating role. She delivers where she can, but if you’re a fan of hers, you’ll be better rewarded to wait a week to welcome her third appearance as Moneypenny in NO TIME TO DIE instead.
The audience is left to the care of an army of CGI animators. The result is a series of mostly incoherent, but color-coded scenes of destruction conjoined with a recycled one-liner. The finale fight, set in San Francisco’s venerated Grace Cathedral, is a messy action piece where the only way to track the combat is by distinguishing between these color-coded symbiotes.
Thankfully the sequel to SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE swings into theaters in October of 2022. It’s probably SONY’s last, best chance at rescuing their cinematic universe, because their shrugging mid/post credit scene reveals they don’t even know where they’re heading next.
