La Ron S. Readus
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Venom (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2019-10-18 03:29:14 +0000 UTC
Today on Film Friday, I take a look at the film, Venom. Let’s Begin
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/Venom is a 2018 “superhero” film by Sony Pictures based on the Marvel character of the same name. It tells the story of Eddie Brock, an online reporter in San Francisco who -- covering a news story turned conspiracy revolving around a company called “The Life Foundation -- comes across the alien symbiote Venom, and the two have to work together in order to stop the plan of its founder and HIS alien symbiote Riot of a symbiote invasion of Earth./
Readers, I’m just gonna be frank with you. I don’t like Venom.
As a Spider-Man villain that initially served as the equivalent of the game-changing era for certain heroes like Superman’s Doomsday and Batman’s Bane
The concept of this character basically being the equivalent of Spider-Man’s ex that constantly wants revenge for dumping him but will always come running back to him whenever he promises they can make it work began to get irritating.
Also they didn’t really do anything TRULY interesting with the character until like, 2011 with Agent Venom do not AT me, bitch...
And it’s not just the character, either. I..dislike the concept of the symbiotes in general.
/Carnage is just Joker drenched in ketchup, Toxin...exists, and Riot & co are pretty much a worse version of the Psycho Rangers; the symbiotes as a fictional species are just not for me/
It’s something that Spider-Man trilogy director Sam Raimi and I have in common, as a matter of fact. Because believe it or not, while Eddie Brock was definitely scripted, Venom wasn’t supposed to be in Spider-Man 3.
Raimi thought that there was a lack of humanity to Venom, and that Eddie’s initial role in the movie would be better utilized.
The only reason why Eddie Brock’s role in Spider-Man 3 was extended for him to become Venom was because of longtime Spider-Man producer and my eternal arch nemesis Avi Arad
/Who basically peer-pressured Raimi into including Venom in the movie because after doing two movies with HIS favorite villains, Raimi should do one with the FANS favorite villains./
Also known as, “Venom toys sell, so put him in Spider-Man 3.”
Because at the time, Avi Arad co-owned ToyBiz with former Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter. And now you see why I hate him.
So Sam Raimi -- despite his horror background and succeeding in making Doctor Octopus scary as all hell in that one scene is Spider-Man 2 -- failed to deliver a Venom that people wanted to see, despite Spider-Man 3 still pulling in numbers, because he was forced to put a villain he didn’t like into the movie.
Of course, that didn’t matter to Avi Arad. Now that he had his way by getting Raimi to introduce Venom, the next thing on his mind was spin-off potential, and immediately looked to have a Venom movie in production off the trails of the Raimi films like X-Men Origins Wolverine off of the main X-Men trilogy. Or Elektra off of Ben Affleck’s Daredevil.
Y’know, the BEST examples.
The script went through multiple rewrites from 2007 onward back when Spider-Man 4 was a thing, starting with the writers that would EVENTUALLY pen Zombieland and Deadpool 1 and 2. And I REALLY want you to keep that in mind later on during this video.
Then Topher Grace pretty much said no to being Eddie Brock again, Sam Raimi quit Spider-Man 4 -- causing Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst to leave as a result -- because Avi Arad wanted him to include Carnage in the script and Raimi was like “lol I quit.”
This caused Sony to reboot the franchise with The Amazing Spider-Man, and with Avi Arad seeing the success of Marvel Studios’ MCU, decided to use part 2 to branch off Sony’s own Spider-Man Cinematic Universe.
Then The Amazing Spider-Man 2 underperformed, and that’s why Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is gearing up to be Tony Stark’s replacement in the MCU.
But that didn’t mean Avi Arad was giving up on getting his Venom movie. Because with that deal between Sony and Marvel Studios in place in 2015, the Venom movie we all know and...tolerate was announced by Sony a year later as the start of a new franchise.
/It was originally completely separate from Spidey’s interactions with the MCU, initially produced by Matt Tolmach and -- you guessed it -- Avi Arad, who since departed from all of his positions in Marvel Entertainment back in 2006 -- including Marvel Studios, which he both surprisingly and unsurprisingly helped found before the MCU went into full swing with 2008’s Iron Man. Despite that separation, he still found a way to attach himself to the MCU Spidey movies, and every Sony-solo film since the deal with Marvel Studios was inked, with his own production company Arad Productions./
It was then announced that Ruben Fleisher was on board to direct this at-the-time R rated film, and it was only R-rated because before Amy Pascal had the intent of making their new film franchise MCU adjacent so that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man could easily fit in it when the time comes (and it almost did)
Sony at the time saw what Fox did with Deadpool and Logan and was like (I wanna do that too scene from Demon Slayer).
Now you would think because they got the director of Zombieland to direct Venom
/Who initially wanted to do a “more pop and fun spin on a John Carpenter style horror film”/
That they’d at least REWORK the original script that was written for Venom back during the Raimi era of Spider-Man movies, since he directed scripts written by those two before and Deadpool was one of the films that inspired Sony to make the movie rated R in the first place.
That, unfortunately, was not the case.
Because it was gonna be its own thing and not be associated with either the Raimi films or the Amazing films, the script Sony had the guys who wrote Zombieland and both Deadpool movies write was COMPLETELY TOSSED AWAY.
Deciding to write a brand new script instead, they hired the guy who wrote Nic Cage starrers Con Air and Gone in 60 Seconds and one of the writers...of The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
SUCH AN UPGRADE.
Now, I’m not going to say that I didn’t see what Fleisher was aiming for in the final cut of the movie, because I did.
Some of it was done pretty well. While the rest was incredibly nauseating.
/Despite things playing out a bit too quickly and not properly letting the scene build up to play into the horror Fleisher was going for, I thought what was done pretty well was the Symbiotes arrival to earth and Riot possessing multiple human bodies to get to San Francisco to find Venom and the other Symbiotes. Y’know, despite them all being on the same ship that crash landed in Malaysia and all he had to do was kill everyone at the crash site to get to them right then and there instead of going ALL AROUND THE WORLD to San Francisco./
Like, yes. Fleisher did a hell of a good job establishing the horror element he wanted with the way he utilized the coming of Riot over the course of the first two acts of the movie.
/Seeing him control who I assume is J. Jonah Jameson’s son, then body jump to the paramedic to the old woman to the little girl over the course of his journey to San Fran helped establish that Symbiotes ain’t really nothing to mess with here. Especially when you see what all he can do with his final host Carlton Drake./
But all of that is meaningless the moment you realize that Riot is a fucking idiot!
/He could’ve easily went back to the excavation team to free the other symbiotes from the Life Foundation’s extraction of the ship, saved the healthy humans for Venom and the other symbiotes to possess, and just went about global domination that way. Instead, he decided to just take a trip around the world while his friends were being experimented on and died, only to make the Surprised Pikachu face when he arrives at the Life Foundation and finds out that the only surviving symbiote is Venom! Your actions don’t make sense for someone that wants to take over the planet!/
And that’s only the part where the John Carpenter nod kinda worked for me. The part that I found absolutely nauseating to me was just the Venom Riot fight in general. It was like watching oil and water just constantly splash against each other for like, 5 to 10 minutes straight.
(Shows the fight) I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this SO...MUCH.
And Readers, I assure you; that complaint I had about Riot in this movie isn’t an isolated incident.
The writing in this movie is bad. It’s just horrible.
It’s not like the writing in the Deadpool movies where...I still dislike Deadpool as a character, but I still enjoy and appreciate the movies because of how everything works together (another reason why they probably should’ve just reworked the Raimi era script).
The writing in Venom...didn’t even allow me to appreciate the movie, despite Venom being in it. If anything, it just amplified my dislike of the character.
And that has a lot to do with the fact that half-baked villain plans aside, the writing is so juvenile.
As I stated in my initial review of the movie when it was in theaters, the writing reminds me of someone trying to write a Spider-Man free edgelord fanfic origin story for Venom. And that someone is only in seventh grade.
/Because as the Riot situation has shown, common sense is completely placed to the side with some characters just to make them look cool, intimidating or both. Scenarios that have been used in movies and stories beforehand that said seventh grader has probably been exposed to before, have been “badass-ified” in this story as a way for the seventh grader to say “I can do that better.” Little to no time is spent establishing connections between Eddie and Venom to truly warrant any type of companionship that the story wants us to believe that the two have, and the time that could’ve established it was used showing off Eddie trying to separate himself from Venom and Venom’s head-biting skills/
/(You did, Eddie) BITCH, WHEN???/
And the dialogue from both Venom and Carlton Drake is some of the most cringiest try-hard-ass shit I’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing come out of someone’s mouth.
Like, we already know the type of speech that Venom is capable of, and that ALONE is enough to hurt my brain.
(Like a Terd In the Wind) Why do y’all like this??
But hearing Riz Ahmed as Carlton Drake monologuing just...SOLIDIFIES my middle-school edgelord fanfiction theory that is this script
(Bits of the “Isaac” monologue) I want...to DIE.
Now keep in mind, Readers. The cut we got in theaters, with all...THIS shit in it, is the PG-13 version.
Maybe the R-Rated version we were initially GOING to get makes this...thing make sense.
But unfortunately for fans of this film -- and as a result, fortunately for me -- we won’t be getting that cut any time soon.
/Because despite numerous reports from credited sources upon the film’s initial announcement, both Avi Arad and Ruben Fleischer have stated that Venom was NEVER GOING TO BE RATED R TO BEGIN WITH./
To which I respond in the only way I feel is appropriate:
(Spider-Man 1: YOU’RE LYING!)
Readers, if you enjoyed this movie... Congratulations; you’re getting another one.
This time directed by Smeagul starring Woody Harrelson and Carrot Top’s pubic hair wig as Carnage.
Because those of you who paid actual money to watch this movie -- whether it was due to genuine interest, or because you properly thought that it was on some “so bad it’s good” shit
/Helped it gross over 850 million worldwide on a budget of up to 116 million/
Y’all could’ve used that to watch Into The Spider-Verse, and I will NEVER forgive you for not doing so.
No Tea, No Shade to Tom Hardy, who did the best with what he was given.
He already had a director that gave a damn about it. I just wish Sony provided BOTH of them with a better script. WHICH THEY HAD.
Avi Arad also needs to die. Th-That’s...that’s the...that’s the only way these Spider-Man and Spider-Man Related movies can be good again.
Light Yagami just needs to write his and Ike Perlmutter’s name down in a Death Note, and just let their baby boomer asses have heart attacks in the pile of all Spider-Man 3 ToyBiz Venom toys that didn’t sell, so that I can be happy again. It’s the only way
Right now...if you want, you can rent Venom starting at $6 on Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube, and own it digitally from $10 to $15 on Amazon, Vudu, and iTunes
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So with that being said Readers, your homework assignment for the day. Write in the comment section what you thought of Venom if you’ve seen it.
And if you liked this or my INITIAL slightly buzzed Venom review, let me know if you want me to tackle Venom 2 when it comes out, and I’ll...CONSIDER it.
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But until then, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed.
