Part of a movie doing well is knowing what your audience wants and giving it to them. When Venom was announced, part of its appeal was because this was to be the opposite of a superhero film. The tagline was “The World Has Enough Superheroes”, and Venom as a character is known to be one of the scariest anti-heroes in the comic book world. Sure, he sometimes does good things, but mostly he is a force of darkness. The trouble with this film is that no one seemed to know how to play Venom as a villain without making him a hero by the end. The movie itself had some fun moments, some great visual effects, and nice fight scenes. But there still had to be someone worse than Venom, even if he was subpar, and Venom still had to save the world, even though he’s not a “superhero.” Overall, it feels like the studios promised audiences something they couldn’t quite deliver on, and the end effect made the movie fall flat and end up a lot less inspired than it really wanted to be. A lot of people seem to be griping about how a Venom movie doesn’t work without Spider-Man, his opposing force, but that’s not the problem with the movie, at least not really. It’s okay for Venom not to have a Spider-Man – as long as he has something else to make his movie his own.
ReelTalk 