Venom (2018)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2018
	Director: Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland)
	Actors: Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Returns, Dunkirk), Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain, Shutter Island), Riz Ahmed
	Country: USA, CN
	Genre: Action, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 03.06.2019, VOD, 10" tablet screen
Synopsis: Eddie Brock (Hardy) is an engaged reporter but he goes too far and looses everything. Looking for a second chance, he gets infected by an alien parasite.
Review: Let me start with a bit of background. Sony owns the rights to make movies base on characters from the Spider-Man comic books. It thus produced Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy in the 2000's and The Amazing Spider-Man two movies in the 2010's. The character of Venom is part of that world and in fact appears in Spider-Man 3 in 2007. Since 2015 Marvel Studios are allowed to use their own Spider-Man (played by Tom Holland) as part of the MCU and he is thus shown in Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Avengers: Infinity War and the upcoming Spider-Man: Far from Home. But Sony still can and did produce this movie about Venom, not part of Marvel's Cinematic Universe. and Spider-Man doesn't appear in that movie and is not even mentioned. Now that all is clear, what is this movie worth in the current super-hero movies landscape? Well I found it not too bad, thanks to two key components: the extravagant character of the Symbiote named Venom (in its shape, character, behavior, reactions...) and a great acting by Tom Hardy. Had he not put so much effort in creating a likeable anti-hero, the movie would have been a total flop. The special effects are decent, the bad guy is not exceptional, but the main interested of the movie really is the internal conflicts within Eddie, and between Venom and himself. The rest of the movie is composed of side-stories, sometimes interesting, sometimes not. The mid-credit end scene hints at a sequel but I am not convince it will ever happen... For Venom to be incorporated into the MCU would make more sense to me and is tonally not impossible (easier than for Deadpool for sure).
Rating: 5 /10