VENOM: Let There Be Carnage Review almost ready

 

 Venom: Let There Be Carnage

A Film Review by Joe Viglione

*INCOMPLETE REVIEW, READERS OF MEDFORD INFORMATION CENTRAL GET IT FIRST. UNEDITED PROOFS

 

     Interesting that the expensive 007 No Time To Die cost estimate is 250-300 million while Venom, Let There Be Carnage around 110 million.  Where Wikipedia claims the 2018 Venom brought in 856.1 million on a similar 100 to 116 million budget it shows the kind of money being thrown on the table for these epic features.

    But do they hold your interest?  Bear with me as I set up this review, it’s kinda important, I think.

    For the first time in a long time this writer experienced two films in two days, the two hour and forty-three minute No Time to Die on Tuesday, the one hour and a half Let There Be Carnage on the Wednesday.   I like them both, despite the intense violence in both of the motion pictures.

     Some will complain about the nearly 3 hour length of the Bond flick.   I enjoyed it, though the ending was very clear to this appreciator of all things James bond.  It expanded the familiar formula, Vodka Martinis and all, but the chase scenes modernized, of course, and psychotically elegant, and the filming simply exquisite.

     So too with Venom: Let There Be Carnage.  The director is Andy Serkis – Snoke from Star Wars, Caesar from the most recent Planet of the Ape series, Klaue in the Avengers Age of Ultron with co-writer and star Tom Hardy as Venom, a different sort of anti-hero than ultra-villain Bain from The Dark Knight Rises.  The math here is easy, a group of actors now monopolize the comic book heroes and villains, and having an impact on them in a huge way.

     And the result of the Hardy/Serkis alliance?  A very fun, bloodthirsty action film with scenes as chaotic as the 007 No Time to Die.   You have the financial figures at the beginning of this essay.  The ingredients, though corporate and missing obvious storylines that the hardcore fans would lust for, bring in the cash so, like Eon Films and Bond, don’t mess with success.

     Eddie Brock buys chickens for Venom to eat instead of human brains, but Venom is getting some humanity in the second film and has them as his pets, Sonny and Cher.  Perhaps the biggest lull in the movie, and this critic thinks it deflates the mood, is the mega argument between Eddy and Venom.  The divorce.   Again, the direction by Serkis amps up the slam/bang from the previous 2018 installment, but there was something more cohesive in Venom 1, a more studied storyline.  Here you get what you paid for, Venom vs Carnage, a uniquely different clash of titans, the robot vs robot found in Iron Man with tentacles of aliens going north, south, east and west giving no quarter, no place to run, no place to hide.

       Brock’s romantic nemesis, Dr. Dan Lewis (Reid Scott)

Joe Viglione Photo Boston Common Sept 29 2021