Another reason not to trust space goo.

I have never been one to be unduly morose; despite my general disdain for humanity as a whole, I try and remain chipper but I have to admit that over the last couple of weeks, dark thoughts have crept into my head; despite the recent milestones we hit, readership over the last two weeks has almost exactly halved which means either the analytics have been wrong all this time or people just aren't interested any longer. I'm not here for sympathy folks; you can save that for the poor dickheads who just shelled out upwards of a grand to watch 80% of The Spice Girls mime their way through hits of yesteryear to a room full of cretins who refuse to let go of the 90s. I'm no quitter, so I'm just going to stop paying attention to the numbers. You'll find your way here if you want to and if you get a couple of yuks from your time here then that's fair enough by me. Yuk away.

Less then, of this dreary talk of average view counts and percentage of audience using safari as their web browser and on to brighter, shinier, snarkier things. Lest we forget, that's why all four of us are here in the first place.

There's always been a weird sort of stigma around going to the cinema by yourself. A lot of times when it comes up in conversation, the very notion draws looks of revulsion and derision. Personally, I've never had a problem with it but I appear to be in the very slender minority; so it was tonight when I ventured forth on a solo sojourn partially due to my fiancée being in Milton Keynes for work (that really does deserve your pity) and partially because I value my few friendships much more highly than to invite them to watch the potential shit-show that is Venom (my fiancée had already seen it anyway, so nobody missed out on anything).

The press had not been kind to the big gooey villain and the initial Venom-less teaser trailer seemed to confirm that the rumoured re-writes and re-shoots had all but neutered one of the more recognizable and beloved bad guys from the Spider-verse. The main criticism seemed to be that coming off the heady trips that were the excellent, R-rated Deadpool movies, Venom was set to be a 15 (PG-13 in the lands of guns and voter suppression) and therefore could not possibly be anything other than a turd, in the wind (whatever that is, the script is baffling in places). Here's the thing: Deadpool is kind of an R-rated character anyway, doing R-rated stuff in a Mature comic. Spiderman, on the other hand, is not really known for its adult content. Pretty much the opposite actually; a much more wholesome affair, in terms of reputation at least. The argument that a Venom movie without a ton of gore is a weird position to have I think though, because it’s basically just saying screw the plot, I just want to see fountains of blood gushing from the recently severed stumps of a thousand stunt performers. I will concede though that having the central fixation of your main protagonist being that he wants to bite everyone's head off, it is a little odd to have no claret whatsoever. It is far and away not the biggest problem in this movie; I just wanted to put that out there.

Venom is literally and figuratively a big sticky mess. The bare bones of the plot are fairly generic to the point of being utterly devoid of any surprising moments whatsoever. It'd be nice to even have a Shyamalan-esque twist to complain about, but sadly not even that. There are nods towards the possibility of tension: a symbiote switching bodies and hiding in plain sight, the fact that Venom could be slowly killing Eddie Brock just by being bonded with him, the villain working out who betrayed him, etc. Only there is none. No drama whatsoever. Nobody really seems to be in any sort of real peril, or if they are, we kinda don't care. A big part of this lands squarely at the feet of Riz Ahmed who is a great actor, certainly but just isn't cut out for this sort of work. It's rare for a comic villain to be so devoid of menace that he just seems like a work experience kid who's been mistaken for the boss and is now shuffling between departments holding a clipboard and trying to look busy enough that he doesn't get found out by the end of the working day and can come in tomorrow and just get on with sorting out post. Where he should be channelling Gary Oldman from any of his great bad guy turns (Leon or Fifth Element for example) I couldn't help thinking back to Four Lions and Rubber Dinghy Rapids brother.

Tom Hardy does a little better with the slim pickings he's been given in the script, but it's still painfully awkward in places. He's in bumbling loser mode rather than gruff and unintelligible mode but the whole thing falls really flat. There are again, moments of promise in the sparring between host and symbiote but it just never quite lands. Venom is decently rendered, but the characterisation just feels off. Lest we forget he started life as an antagonist and wasn't really considered a good guy (of sorts) until much later in his comic run. He just jumps straight into taking pity on Brock and the Earth seems to have been written as the symbiote world's loveable loser; he's like a big, snotty Labrador. Both he and Brock are miles away from the scheming jealous nemesis to Peter Parker and the unstoppable, monster I remember from the comics. I used to own one particular run where Venom gets tired of the constant fighting and goes to live in peace on a desert island but even that sounds Shakespearean next to what we're being served up here. Which leads me to the absolute biggest issue with Venom.

There's no Spiderman.

I mean honestly, whose smart idea was this? Venom is the quintessential Spiderman villain in that he's everything Parker isn't. He knows Parker's secrets from having initially bonded with him, doesn't make his Spider Sense tingle (phrasing) and is just generally a bit bad ass. He literally owes his existence to Spiderman, but not having ol' Web Head here just makes everything feel a bit half-arsed. Personally, I think you could have easily stuck him in the next Spidey standalone then have your spin offs afterwards if you were desperate to have them, but no we're faced with the prospect of more movies, with more symbiotes, and not a shred more sense to be made. I mean if you get through the rocket bit at the end of this movie without saying "wait, how did that happen again?" you're way ahead of me.

The real kicker is that actually, after all that: I didn't hate it. It wasn't perfect by any means, but the set-pieces were decent, stuff blew up and although the Grand Face Off at the end devolved into what looked like two lumps of well-chewed bubble-gum in a microwave and despite all of the opportunities for greatness they missed (by a country mile) it knocks Topher Grace's abominable take into a cocked hat and I came away just satisfied enough. Just.