Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Directed by Andy Serkis
After finding a host body in investigative reporter Eddie Brock, the alien symbiote must face a new enemy, Carnage, the alter ego of serial killer Cletus Kasady.
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54 films that influenced Venom: Let There Be Carnage
What critics say influenced Venom: Let There Be Carnage
Hardy reprises his role from 2018’s comic book adaptation (a Marvel Cinematic Universe-adjacent offering from Sony Pictures which unfolds in the same realm as Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies) as Eddie Brock, an ambitious San Francisco investigative reporter.
The movie began as serious Marvel business, supposedly — an extended-universe nod to the comic books, and an establishing cameo in 2007's Spider-Man 3 — though where it landed felt a lot closer to chaotic buddy comedy: a platonic love story between a man and the extraterrestrial insult comic living inside him.
Although a character born on the pages of Spider-Man, Venom is a stand-alone character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Andy Serkis’ Venom: Let There Be Carnage gives the people (aka you lunatic Venom supporters) what they want — a slapstick superhero comedy that cites The Odd Couple as inspiration for its buddy antics between Eddie Brock and his Venom symbiote.
I never thought I'd get "The Odd Couple" out of a Marvel movie, but here it is.
The first “Venom,” released in 2018, suffered from the need to set up Hardy’s one-man production of “The Odd Couple.”
Straddling the subversive energies of The Odd Couple and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, it’s the classic straight man juxtaposed with the comic foil routine, perhaps with an arguable dash of queerness to pique the interests in communities scavenging for representation through the ruins of mainstream studio filmmaking.
It’s Beetlejuice meets The Odd Couple as Brock and Venom must learn to live together despite their differences.
Deliberately shallow in plot and with a setup that recalls the “Batman Forever” (1995) aesthetic, this “Venom” follow-on as directed by Andy Serkis is brassier, more playful and funnier than it has any right to be.
Harrelson and Harris are a little distracting at first, the two bringing in the Surge-fueled energy of Batman Forever extras.
While I equate that to Levi Stubbs (the carnivorous Audrey II in the 1986 film version of Little Shop of Horrors ) with a mouthful of gravel, Hardy, in an interview with Screen Rant, offers his inspiration.
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Unlike, say, Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin in 1984's excellent body-sharing comedy All of Me , every attempt at a similar situation here -- such as Eddie ducking into a women's bathroom to argue with Venom -- falls completely flat.
Instead of being an exciting comic book movie, director Andy Sirkis and writer Kelly Marcel try turning this into a twisted version of the 1984 Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin comedy All of Me .
At its best, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” feels like a superpowered version of the minor Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin classic “All of Me.”
Then it springs out, looking like an oversize, multi-tentacled version of the creature from “Alien” — 40 years and counting, Ridley Scott’s movie retains its influence — and the symbiote becomes even scarier in action than appearance.
Think of an Alien beast with a smoother head, black complexion and a low growl of a voice that renders all he says all-but-incomprehensible.
Of course, the amorphous creature that offers a slight resemblance to the chest-busting monster in the Alien films (and is quite a bit less acidic), got its start as a troublesome attachment to Spider-Man in the mid-1980s.
Like "Evil Dead II," this is an off-the-wall, over-the-top, "Three Stooges" inspired freak show.
The Verdict: Much like Evil Dead II , Venom 2 takes what works about its shaggy predecessor, turns it up to 11 and gives it almost exclusive focus, and exponentially increases the silliness.
Its chief difference — and a brilliant angle — is that Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe isn’t a tough, quick-witted and verbose gumshoe like Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep or Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake but rather a shuffling, mumbling slob played by Elliott Gould.
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One wishes Serkis and scribe Kelly Marcel had the agency to really lean into this weirdness, of a man’s body serving as host for a demanding entity, with similar voice work to something more outrageously strange like the 1990 French cult classic Baby Blood .
Rather than really make an effort to change things, the production clearly saw the previous movie’s success as validation of its bad choices, so it regularly succumbs to many of the same issues – maintaining the air of bad mid-aughts comic book movies like Mark Steven Johnson's Daredevil , Tim Story’s Fantastic Four , and Jonathan Hensleigh's The Punisher .
Lejos quedan los años zozobrantes del cambio de milenio, cuando títulos como Hulk (2003), Daredevil (2003), Catwoman (2004), Los 4 Fantásticos (2005) o Elektra (2005) aunaban palos de ciego, efectos digitales cuestionables y ningún sentido del ridículo en sus traslaciones de los personajes de las viñetas.