Venom: Why The Reviews Were So Negative

Venom’s solo movie wasn’t well-received by critics, though audiences had the complete opposite reaction – here’s what happened. After a bad debut in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 as one of the movie’s many villains, Eddie Brock and Venom got a second chance, though this time in a solo movie and separate from the current version of Spider-Man (for now, at least). Venom arrived in 2018 with Ruben Fleischer on the lead and with Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom, and it was a very different version from Topher Grace’s in Spider-Man 3.

Venom told the story of journalist Eddie Brock and his encounter with an alien symbiote during an investigation that led him to Life Foundation and their experiments involving humans and symbiotic life form. The symbiote ended up bonding with Eddie, manifesting around his body as a monstrous creature and granting him some special abilities. Eddie and the symbiote, whose name is Venom, teamed up and went after Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) and Riot, the symbiote Drake bonded with. Venom was a box office hit and an even bigger success with the audience, but the critics’ reaction to it was the opposite, and the film got a bunch of negative reviews.

At the time of its release, Venom had a 30% Tomatometer score at Rotten Tomatoes, which has gone down to 29%. What bothered critics the most was how “chaotic” the film was (in narrative, characters, and more), while others were expecting to either see Spider-Man or at least have some references to the famous superhero, and pointed out the lack of Spider-Man and the character’s “need of attachment” to him as a big flaw. Something that surprised critics and audiences was the film’s humor and how Tom Hardy managed it, though for critics those were other points against it. Here are some samples of negative reviews Venom got:

Variety:

So why, in “Venom,” does it seem like he’s doing his impersonation of a benignly inarticulate stoner clown who’s only got half his marbles? It may be his way of lightening up and going with the flow of a popcorn movie. It may be his way of playing a guy who becomes one-half of a hybrid creature: a fearsome monster superhero who’s like Jekyll and an alien Hyde in one mutating gelatinous body. […] “Venom” is a textbook case of a comic-book film that’s unexciting in its ho-hum competence, and even its visual-effects bravura.

The Wrap:

Leaping from plot point to plot point without the hindrance of logic or characters, this big-screen return of the legendary Spider-Man nemesis — last seen in the franchise-hobbling “Spider-Man 3” — is aggressively loud and stupid without being much fun at all. It exists as a waste of time (although, one hopes, a sizable payday) for some very talented actors, and it’s proof that even Marvel (whether it’s the studio or other films based on its imprint) doesn’t always get it right.

The Seattle Times:

Too bad the audience has to wait 45 minutes for him to put in a full-bodied appearance in the eponymous “Venom,” a picture in the running for the dubious distinction of being perhaps the worst Marvel-derived origin story ever. And that includes the odious 2015 “Fantastic Four.”

New York Post:

If “Venom” seems like a rare miss for Marvel, that’s because it was made only “in association” with Marvel. It’s actually a Sony product that’s totally separate from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That detached language, “in association with,” is used twice in the opening credits alone. My audience of film geeks was rolling with laughter, before any character had even spoken, at Marvel’s obvious attempt to distance itself from this wreck.

However, others had some good things to say about Venom and its different tone and style from other recent superhero films, especially those from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Some critics praised its surprising combination of genres and how Sony injected some humor into a supervillain. Viewers were so welcoming of Venom precisely because of how it ended up being a comedy with action, thriller, and some hints of horror, and appreciated that it stayed away from Spider-Man without fully leaving the possibility of a crossover behind.

IndieWire:

The world may have enough superheroes, but it doesn’t have enough good movies about them. “Venom” goes a small way toward changing that, even though it’s technically about a supervillain — or, if we’re being generous, an antihero.

AP News:

Having that feeling of “What the hell is this thing?” is an underrated quality in movies — good or bad ones — and it’s even more captivating when the movie, itself, seems to have thrown up its hands in exasperation. Having often been critical of the frequently formulaic filmmaking of Marvel movies, it would be disingenuous of me to not appreciate the more freewheeling and slapdash jumble of “Venom.” It’s not every movie that tries, however awkwardly, to marry ghoulish body horror with a goofball buddy comedy that happens to take place in the same body. These are the sorts of things we did in the ’80s.

Vanity Fair:

“I’m sorry about Venom,” a character says in the new superhero-ish movie, Venom. It’s a howler of a line, but you know what? I’m surprisingly not sorry about Venom, which is just stupid enough to be fun without being a waste of time. […] For several weird stretches, though, Venom is a bouncy good time. The movie doesn’t seem to care if you’re laughing with it, at it, or whatever. Just as long as you’re engaged, rollicking along as it doles out fan service while still making a gleeful hash of so many serious franchise movies about very silly things.

The opinion of critics was no impediment for Venom’s popularity, and Sony greenlit a sequel, to be released in 2021. What critics didn’t like about the movie, such as its tone, performances, and more are elements that the audience was fully on board with – now it’s only a matter of time to see if the sequel will follow that same path or if it will make some changes to appeal to critics.