Member-only story
Film Review: “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (2021)
Sony steps up this time around.
In 2007, the popular member of Spider-Man’s rogue's gallery, Venom made his on-screen debut in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 3”. The film divided audiences mainly due to the fact that there were too many villains to keep track of on-screen. A mistake that Sony would sadly repeat with the more maligned “Amazing Spider-Man 2” in 2014. Venom was often the weakest element in the film: Topher Grace was horribly miscast as Eddie Brock and the CGI was kind of cheesy. It was also very telling that Venom was shoehorned into the film by the studio.
Still, after “Spider-Man 3’s” less-than-stellar reception and the dumpster fire that was 2014’s “Amazing Spider-Man 2", Sony continued to clamor for a slice of that MCU pie by trying to pull off their own Spider-Verse. Starting in 2018, we got “Venom” starring Tom Hardy in the lead role. While Hardy was a much better Eddie Brock than Topher Grace was in “Spider-Man 3”, The film itself felt more like a half-baked “Resident Evil” prequel. Seriously, I was waiting for Milla Jovovich to show up in a mid-credits stinger. 2018’s “Venom” was tonally inconsistent, by-the-numbers and suffered from poor lighting in its production. Still, despite the first “Venom” being sub-par as hell, It was quite successful and managed to rake in over $850 million at the…