Venom: The good and the bad

LAS VEGAS, NV – APRIL 23: (L-R) Producer Avi Arad, actors Michelle Williams, Tom Hardy, Riz Ahmed, director Ruben Fleischer and producer Matt Tolmach attend the CinemaCon 2018 Gala Opening Night Event: Sony Pictures Highlights its 2018 Summer and Beyond Films at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace during CinemaCon, the official convention of the National Association of Theatre Owners, on April 23, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images for CinemaCon )

The Bad: The acting

Tom Hardy is always going to be good in whatever he plays. Say what you want about Bane in Dark Knight, but he had a memorable performance. He was also good in Mad Max: Fury Road.  Michelle Williams was about as good at you’d expect her to be and that is where it stops. Jenny Slate played a decent character, but fell flat a lot. Considering that she wasn’t in the movie for a while, she couldn’t afford to have any lackluster moments.

Then there was Riz Ahmed who was just bad. He had zero facial expressions worth writing home about, he had the emotional range of a bad 1980’s movie goon, and he just wasn’t believable an antagonist. He may have been the worst part of the movie. With a movie with very few major roles, you’d expect more people to stand out. This wasn’t the case.

PG-13 rating

Have the movie companies learned nothing from Blade, Deadpool, and Logan? R-rated movies can do well in the theaters. I’ve seen fair amount of people avoid this movie due to the PG-13 rating. Venom is an R-rated character. He may not curse, but there were a plethora of scenes that could have looked better if the camera didn’t pan away when something was happening.

This could also have been the cause of that really bad final fight scene. I may have this in the bad section, but it didn’t take away from the movie too much. It just would have been nice for the movie to have more freedom during fight scenes. Who knows, maybe there is going to be an unrated and extended version coming out.

What did and didn’t you like about Venom? Let me know in the comments below.