Venom

Having harvested interstellar phenomena, and obtained coveted extraterrestrial booty, a courageous spacecraft swiftly descends towards Earth, and none of its crew survives.

The alien lifeforms discovered bond with various hosts, begrudgingly commandeering their bodies, with intent most disruptive and grievous.

Including, but not limited to, heading back to space to find their fellow mucus-like beings, in order to one day return, and devour humanity.

Whole.

Or from the inside out.

It depends.

Both conscientious reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and technocratic phenom Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) eventually find themselves hosting representatives of the species, reps whose personality differences closely match those of Brock and Drake, the reps in fact searching for unique personalities, even if corresponding storylines can't withstand the symmetry.

Not Marvel's finest hour.

I thought perhaps the buzz was off, preferring to see it for myself before adding an opinion, but Venom misses 8.25 times out of 10, although there's something to be said for such a complete lack of refinement.

Something bad.

In a nutshell, the story's too blunt, too direct, too surface level.

It's not that you can't write a great story that's blunt and direct, many appealing stories are, as many have noted, Venom's lacking the aesthetic expertise that held those stories together though, everything's condensed into purposeful formulaic probabilities for instance, which unfortunately assumed they required nothing more.

It happens.

Ruben Fleisher's usually quite good, I don't know what happened here but I suspect his hands were too tied, his independent spirit was exorcized throughout production, and the result fell far short of his audience's expectations, since independent spirits often lack inspiration when conventionally constrained.

Took one for the team perhaps.

I suppose every Marvel film isn't destined to present a deep convincing narrative that cerebrally shocks and actively theorizes, but Venom does neither, and metaphorically secretes jingoistic protoplasm.

I suppose you need deadlines and a production schedule but when you're bound to make multimillions regardless, do you need to follow them/it so strictly?

You probably do.

I don't work in film.

It's kind of funny when Venom discusses his sociohistorical misfortunes with Eddie.

Too little too late though.

But something cool for round 2.