If you’ve seen the first Venom movie, just imagine Tom Hardy fighting Woody Harrelson. Now you’ve seen “Let There Be Carnage.”
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” is a bland, carbon copy of its predecessor that chooses to retread old ground instead of doing anything new. Venom may like chocolate, but his second big screen outing is pure vanilla.
The story is a shameless retread of all the themes present in the original. At the end of “Venom,” Eddie and the brain-hungry symbiote strike a deal in which Venom will be allowed to eat people, but only bad guys. Yet “Let There Be Carnage” starts off by letting us know that Eddie has since gone back on his word, forbidding the consumption of any human flesh and instead resigning his “parasite” to chewing on a tire and eating chickens and chocolate. Venom spends about the same amount of time chewing on a tire as he does actually biting heads off, about 10 seconds.
The only difference between this film and the first is the substitution of Riz Ahmed for Woody Harrelson as the antagonist, one of the few improvements to be found. Harrelson has obviously been waiting for a chance to bust out his “Natural Born Killers” schtick for a while.
His turn as the legendary comic book serial killer Cletus Kasady is the best part of the movie, though that’s not saying all that much. He was at least entertaining while on screen, although he did turn into a giant red tornado at one point... not sure what that was all about. Harrelson’s whacky, ridiculous performance feels like it fell out of a Saturday Night Live sketch, but was also the only thing keeping me awake.
Andy Serkis’ direction is also an improvement on the previous movie, his camera work, blocking and composition show that he was at least attempting to earn his paycheck. The poor final result does not fall squarely on his shoulders considering the script he had to work with. Serkis injects some actual excitement into the film’s action sequences, making fights between two angry globs of Silly Putty as entertaining as possible.
Tom Hardy gives another, shall we say interesting performance as Eddie Brock, notably lobster tank-free this time. Hardy plays the role well, but it’s the relationship he has with the titular alien that sends their film into a nosedive. The odd-couple relationship that Eddie and Venom have was off-the-wall, quasi-amusing the first time around, but it gets old in a hurry on the second pass. Neither seems to have learned anything from their first film, instead choosing to endlessly bicker like an old married couple.
Their constant arguing wears thin very early on, and isn’t funny despite being played for laughs throughout. The two have been constantly fighting like two kids wanting to play with the same toy for two movies now, I think audiences have gotten the gist. Tom Hardy’s ability to believably talk to himself for 90 minutes is still worth mentioning, let’s just hope that he and Venom can become more symbiotic on the next go-around.
Bland and uninteresting supporting characters Anne Weying - played by Michelle Williams - and her now-fiance Dan Lewis - Reid Scott - have also been carried over from the first film, and have even less to do than before. Williams is basically only there to become She-Venom again for about five seconds, continuing the theme of pointless repeats of “Venom” for no real reason.
The new supporting characters we’re introduced to are just as unimportant as the ones we already know. Naomie Harris’ Shriek is a hollow interpretation of her comic book counterpart and exists only as an eventual foil to her murderous lover’s symbiote. While Stephen Graham as Detective Mulligan is only there to provide a half-hearted backstory for Shriek. Sony Pictures has obviously learned no lessons from their previous universe-building tries, attempting to set up a return/spinoff for the two least interesting characters in a somehow less interesting movie.
The worst thing to happen to this franchise was the $856 million box office haul from the first film. It made it easier for Sony to keep their Venom movies in the PG-13 slot instead of going full-blown rated-R, which is as much a detriment to this movie as it was the previous. Venom is a violent character with a tendency to orally remove people’s heads from their bodies. His comic book stories embrace that aspect of his character, while his movies attempt to shunt it into the corner, only letting the Lethal Protector eat one head per movie so far, and without any of the trademark blood and gore that fans of the comics have been begging for.
Sony’s unwillingness to commit to Venom’s lethality isn’t much of a surprise, considering how much “Venom” raked in at the box office in 2018. The studio is apparently content with their watered-down PG-13 version of the character, as long as he keeps making money. Their long game with Venom has always been obvious, keep his violent tendencies at bay so he’ll have a better chance of crossing over to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Judging from the film’s mid-credits scene, Sony has successfully used their Spider-Man rights as leverage for Marvel to incorporate Venom into their universe. Marvel has proven their affinity for making quality Spider-Man movies where Sony can’t, hopefully they can give Eddie and Venom a movie worthy of their comic book stature at some point down the road.
It’s certainly not a glowing endorsement when the best part of the film was a 30-second mid-credits stinger promising that Venom has been moved into a wholly more exciting universe, but that’s what this film left me with. In the end, “Let There Be Carnage” left me feeling much like Venom himself, promised juicy brains but forced to eat chickens and chew on a tire instead.
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