There’s something serendipitous to Andy Serkis directing a movie about a man whose body is shared by two personas in constant conflict, that looks to other people like someone talking to themselves.
Andy Serkis is the primary reason I decided to see Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a sequel to a movie I didn’t much like. I have high hopes for Serkis, as I do generally anyone who was a part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy -but Serkis particularly has been proving himself a creative and visionary artist in the years since he accidentally became the poster boy for motion-capture performance (and grew to become quite passionate about it). His directing debut Breathe garnered little attention, as did his passion project Jungle Book adaptation released to Netflix in 2018. So this Venom sequel, a lower tier superhero film but a superhero film nonetheless, is instantaneously his highest profile movie behind the camera -it’s where more people are going to meet Andy Serkis the director.
It’s maybe not the greatest introduction, but certainly not the worst -Serkis doesn’t add much distinct flavour to the film that wasn’t either hinted at in Ruben Fleischer’s original or came to this film primarily through the screenplay by Kelly Marcel; but nor is his direction ever incompetent or lacking in sufficient energy. In short, Serkis does his job exactly as required, but still I think it’s better for his involvement -if still not quite good.
Certainly Venom: Let There Be Carnage has a better idea of its’ identity than the first film, which owes as much to Tom Hardy as anything. For whatever reason, he is really invested in these movies and this character -a credited producer and probably bigger contributor to the screenplay than his story credit suggests. This movie doesn’t try at all to be genuinely serious or scary, checking back in with Hardy’s Eddie Brock living casually with the Venom symbiote in an explicit Odd Couple dynamic. They work together on cases, occasionally fight crime, but also bicker and complain through a clear and quite literal co-dependence. The movie gets some good gags out of this: like a pair of chickens Eddie keeps around the apartment for Venom to feed on in place of humans, only for Venom to grow too emotionally attached to them to do so. It’s a very bizarre situation, and the script more fully takes advantage of its’ comedic potential, because to do otherwise would have to acknowledge the darker angles to the premise of a hostile alien parasite merging with a human. The smart choice I think.
It allows for the movie to be a lot more entertaining than the first, playing into this weird relationship that undergoes a typical falling out, which ultimately results in a Venom “coming out” scene at a rave (to cement the films’ queer subtexts). Hardy is having more fun in this too, even while Eddie remains something of a bland personality -the comedy there is definitely something the gruff, stoic Hardy doesn’t get to play much. But otherwise the movie doesn’t really go anywhere all that different. The villain, rather than a tech bro, is a sociopathic serial killer called Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) -whose twisted history is illustrated rather strikingly through an animated sequence designed to an almost Tim Burton aesthetic. Cletus of course is aided by his own symbiote, born via Cletus biting Eddie and drawing blood -a creature called Carnage who, as his name suggests, causes a lot of it. There’s also Cletus’ love interest Frances (Naomie Harris), also a dangerous convict with the superpower of a sonic scream -conveniently one of the only things that can placate a symbiote. And so the plot is a relatively straightforward one of Eddie and Venom having to put aside differences and work together to defeat these bad guys -it’s almost nostalgic. The kind of storyline you’d find in a 90s or early 2000s superhero movie. That is essentially the world that both Venom movies operate in -they are those bad but kind of neat relics of a time before interconnected universes, deep lore, and ever more complicated plotting ruled the day. But it can’t last forever though, given the other superhero property in Sony’s roster.
The issue isn’t a minimalist plot so much as a minimalist story. There’s an attempt to have Eddie confront the repercussions of his journalism: a less than impartial report on Cletus and his crimes ahead of his trial and execution is what prompts him to target Eddie -but Cletus’ appeals to the validity of his trauma don’t amount to much and are clearly efforts to excuse his wrongs. So the professional stakes aren’t really there for Eddie -it’s only his relationship with Venom that propels any momentum, and there’s only so far that can go. Endeavours to humanize the villains and their relationship also falters, Frances exists to be more a device, which does Naomie Harris a disservice. Also done a disservice is Michelle Williams, once again far too good for this material, and even more of a waste this time around. Stephen Graham plays beneath his abilities as well as the standard cop. Even Harrelson, who seems a natural fit for this kind of a wildcard character, plays too conventionally at times.
Likewise is the state of the films’ visuals, which is perhaps the greatest disappointment in a movie helmed by Andy Serkis. The general VFX are fine, but don’t stand out in a meaningful way –certainly not in the way they might had Serkis brought in performance capture. And despite a change in tone from the first film, the aesthetics have remained largely the same. The colour palette, though a touch fuller than some superhero movie counterparts, isn’t terribly pronounced, and the character of Carnage, bright red in his comic incarnation, is a dark enough red that in the climax it becomes hard to tell him apart from Venom. The climax just in general is kind of messy (though the silly wedding pretext is fun). It benefits from being inside a space, as opposed to what the first movie gave us, but there’s little more sense of that space or the action of the fight. And it utilizes tiresome tropes at the expense of both Harris’ and Williams’ characters without any substantive comment or deviation.
It’s still without question a funny movie, and quite a short one too, which perhaps allows it to be palatable where the first film was more often annoying. But for the elements of Venom: Let There Be Carnage that I admire (and I’m certainly rooting for Serkis), it still doesn’t manage to be very good. And the idea of it expanding into a larger universe, unsurprisingly hinted at, only dampens further expectations for the future of Venom. Sony would do well to channel their resources elsewhere.
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