By Omer Sanchez

“Venom” is the most recent film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, releasing on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018, and it has received mixed reviews. The film is about a reporter named Eddie Brock, played by Tom Hardy, who is quite famous around his city and highly respected by his peers. He then tries to take down Carlton Drake, played by Riz Ahmed, the founder of the Life Foundation, by trespassing into the company with the help of a scientist who works there. During the investigation, an accident happens when a lab experiment made contact with Eddie, which made the alien leave her body, then entering Eddie’s body and now he has to deal with Venom, also played by Hardy, a slimy alien who needs to control something or someone to stay alive. While this is happening, Carlton wants his alien back and has his own workers chase Eddie down, doing whatever it takes to get Venom back.

The film has received mixed reviews, with critics not liking the film, while audiences seem to enjoy the film. I was extremely curious on why critics and audience couldn’t see eye-to-eye on this film. So heading into the movie, I had no idea of what expectations I should set.  

Let’s start with some of the bad. The main villain, Carlton Drake felt like a generic villain. He was didn’t seem threatening, mostly because he has his scientist do the dirty work, such as allowing people to be human test subjects. Also, he had all of his security find Eddie when he left with Venom. He was a scientist who didn’t personally do any testing himself.

Venom wasn’t the only alien to show up in the film. There would another alien like him who I sometimes forgot about until the film showed scenes of him. The only good that came out of that second alien character was how it was able to survive so long, by using different people as a host like a child, an old lady and a paramedic. Unfortunately, this alien looked similar to Venom, just with a grayer color scheme and a small height difference. This alien wasn’t in the movie too long, so the character wasn’t truly fleshed out.

I also didn’t really care for many of the characters. The only characters who had good lines, or even close to a personality, were the two main characters. Eddie’s love interest, Anne Weying, played by Michelle Williams, wasn’t really important to the movie until around the last 30 minutes – maybe last 35 minutes. She only took major interest in Eddie again because of Venom taking over Eddie. She just wasn’t important, and maybe it’s because of her lack of screen time. I was frustrated at this because she did have some good moments like bonding with Venom.

Eddie was more of a sarcastic smart mouth while Weying was generic. She was that generic girlfriend role, in which she breaks up with her boyfriend but later in the film, when she’s helping her ex-boyfriend, she starts having feelings for the first guy again.

Why I did I like this movie so much? Perhaps the main reason was the protagonists, Eddie and Venom. The two main protagonists had some good chemistry together. I was not expecting their chemistry to be good. An example of this is Venom, who has a mind of its own, and can talk to Eddie in his head, getting mad at being called a parasite, and demands that Eddie apologize like a little kid.

Another example of their craziness is when Eddie was able to obtain photos to bring down Carlton so he went to his old journalist job to deliver the evidence to his boss. After leaving the photos on top of his boss’s desk, he left and Venom kept telling Eddie to jump out the window, which Eddie refused to do by taking the elevator. This then led to Venom calling him a certain word, which I found hilarious. There apparently were several people in the theater who felt the same.

Eddie was funny with a tragic incident that cost him his relationship and his job. A few months later, he would end up being moved out of his apartment and was on the verge of an eviction. So seeing a character like him become a popular public figure was probably the best character development. He would give off some mean responses as well, such as he did in bar to another character, simply because he didn’t want Eddie to change the channel. He is an honest journalist though, even ruining his relationship with Anne just to figure out the truth about Carlton.

The action scenes were also good. The first major action scene was a car chase with Eddie still not understanding what exactly Venom is. As he’s riding his motorcycle, Venom is helping him, such as forming an anchor to help slide between two cars at an traffic light, or having a big shield come out of Venom’s arm to shield Eddie. I  believe that this film did its best to show off what Venom could do.

However, I still think that this movie should have been a R-rated movie. There was little to no blood in this film, which is weird because there are scenes where Venom eats people and even ripped a character’s head off. Maybe because of Marvel’s lighthearted take in movies – such as the constant humor in films like Guardians of the Galaxy – affected the rating for this film. In the comics, Venom is a brutal villain, and can easily rip people into pieces. In fact, Venom eats people for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Venom had some funny lines which makes him seem less intimidating. I think Venom could have still been funny and intimidating at the same time. There have been superhero movies that were rated R but still had humor. An example of this is another superhero film called “Deadpool,” which had humor in it while still deserving the R rating. If  Venom had been rated R, we could have seen a more gruesome side of Venom. The humor could stay, but having a character be both scary and funny sounds like a more interesting combination.