Internet Janitor
I challenge you to tell me how the movie would have been different had they replaced Tom Hardy with Leslie Neilson (from Airplane and The Naked Gun). This one is such a screwball comedy, I half expected one of the Three Stooges to come out and call Venom a knucklehead and give him a noogie.
In short, I really hated this movie. All of it. Every frame. Every word. Every scene.
In this last go around, we meet up with Waldorf and Stattler (aka Eddie Brock and Venom played by Tom Hardy, who is so much better than all of this) as they find themselves on the run from creatures from their home planet as well as Earth. There is a unscrupulous secret laboratory near the soon-to-be decommissioned Area 51 run by a childishly optimistic scientist and a harsh, by-the-numbers, kill-everyone general. The creator of the symbiotes, Knull (voiced by he great Andy Serkis), needs venom to break free of his cage.
I have disliked every movie in this series. While in the comics, there is back and forth between Venom and Eddie, it never seems to go this far into any comedic situation. It’s mind-boggling how desperately they cling to the most lame attempts at being humorous.
They also come up with an excuse, this time, as to why they see so little of Venom in full costume. I believe it comes to around 15 minutes or so. Knull is very interested in comic books, and here he sits in a chair with his head lowered, and that’s it. Perhaps three minutes of screen time.
Oh, a hippy family (who are vegan, which is likely the more terrifying part of the film) is travelling to see if, during the decommission of Area 51 if they can see any aliens. Then, thanks to the military’s notoriously lax security around super-secret bases, they even manage to walk into the facility with no one seeing them. Classic. Happens all the time. I see no purpose for them, other than for more slapstick comedy spots and to extend a movie with a bare bones story.
Typically, I like Tom Hardy, but there’s no personality here. Venom is annoying as always, and even though it’s a short movie, it feels like it’s at least three hours.
The only good thing that I can say is that this is the end. This version of Venom will never appear in the MCU, and given its complete disconnection from Spider-Man Man this is how it should be. Sony needs to stop. Just stop. Stick to the animated movies.