“Venom”: an unsuccessful film with Tom Hardy, which could become a supervillain blockbuster

“Venom” is a Ruben Fleischer film about a minor negative character in the Spider-Man universe. The main role in the film played by Tom Hardy. I believe that “Venom” had every chance of becoming a breakthrough blockbuster with the main character, the villain, but for several reasons at once he failed.

Western critics and fans greeted “Venom” with obvious disappointment. The verdict was unequivocal: today, superheroes can only do in the head Marvel, and side branches (that is, Marvel comics, the rights to film embodiment belong to other studios) often fail - they are old-fashioned and straightforward. Those in the current movie are "X-Men", for which XX Century Fox is responsible, and "Spider-Man", rethinked over at Sony. “Venom” was originally a villain in the world of “Spider-Man” - for example, he fought with a superhero in the third part of the film trilogy of Sam Raimi in the not-so-long 2007. But he also has an independent life and destiny, to which a new picture is dedicated. It did without Peter Parker. Almost.

“Venom” is built on the standoff of independent journalist Eddie Brock and visionary mogul Carlton Drake. A rich man, a madcap and a scientist Drake takes a mysterious substance out of space, which tends to merge together with terrestrial organisms and give them unimaginable abilities, but at the same time devour them from the inside. Brock finds out that Drake is experimenting in public and is trying to tell the world about it, which immediately leads to his dismissal, breaking up with the bride and prolonged depression. The real duel begins when a symbiotic substance named Venom infuses Eddie, making him cruel and invulnerable, and Drake merges with Rayot in response - a symbiote of even greater strength and ambition.

Mostly, “Venom” really loses to any Marvel film taken at random. Special effects and chases in it are performed at the level, but this is not the point. Actually, “Venom” is a great example to prove to not believers: the strength of successful projects of the current Hollywood is not at all in high budgets and advanced technologies. First of all, she - in drama and directing.

Three at once - Jeff Pinkner not bad “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”, weak “The Dark Tower”, Scott Rosenberg (excellent “Spider-Man” Sam Raimi and Kelly Marcel (“Fifty Shades of Gray») wrote the script “Venom”. The result is discouraging: as if three experienced playwrights raced all the stamps together in one picture and arranged them so that the viewer, even for the first time in life, watched kinokomiks, always overtook them with his assumptions at least a step.

Here is a girl Eddie says to him: "Do not even think about asking dangerous questions at an interview, you will substitute me and lose your job." Of course, in the next scene he asks the same questions, immediately becoming unemployed and lonely. Eddie is watching cowardly as the robber cleans the cashier in the shop of a harmless Chinese woman - and you visualize Eddie-Venom, who is tearing off his head somewhere in the second half of the film. Here Drake with lust looks at the dark substance from space - and I want to shout to him: do not play the fool, swallow it quickly, but you want just that. And so on in everything, down to the smallest details.

Directed by Ruben Fleischer is another cause for frustration. By nature, a gifted man, whose gallant debut of “Zombieland” was both funny and touching, with each following picture lost credibility. “Venom” is a vivid example of the final absorption of a living individuality by the black symbiote of the studio system: no trace of Fleischer’s personal style can be found here. Moreover, local decisions are rather discouraged, starting with the choice of actors for the main roles. You can also understand the desire to use Tom Hardy in an uncharacteristic role of a loser (he tries his best, but you still involuntarily remember how good he was in the guise of a demonic Baine in the latest “The Dark Knight” Christopher Nolan). But charming and cute Riz Ahmed as the newest doctor of Frankenstein? The short plaid skirt, like a schoolgirl, and the children's hairstyle of the heroine of 38-year-old Michelle Williams cause a feeling of awkwardness.

However, there is at least one (but compelling) reason to watch “Venom”. This is Venom itself. He is amazingly made, painted, fashioned and directed. Impeccable anti-hero, oozing darkest sarcasm and always hungry; when he moves into Eddie and he begins to devour living lobsters in a restaurant, having climbed into an aquarium for their convenience, the neat Hollywood blockbuster slips into creative insanity. In “Venom” there is not enough blood and released guts - the producers obviously cared about the age rating - but the black humor and cruelty of the fighting scenes raise the mood of the bored spectator almost instantly. The very theme of split personality is presented in the internal dialogues of Eddie with Venom unexpectedly witty - as if some fourth screenwriter, invited from outer space, wrote these words. Familiar with Jekyll and Hyde (and fans of the Hulk comic book and Bruce Banner) the conflict is outlined in “Venom” violently and evil.