Venom (2018)

Elevator Pitch: Eddie Brock is an investigative TV reporter who loses his job when revealing the criminal activities of the chief executive of the Life Foundation, which is trying to find a host for alien parasites brought back by one of the company’s spacecraft. Later, when Eddie is exploring the company facilities he is invaded by a symbiote known as Venom, and from then on the two live uneasily together, being forced in the end to combine their capabilities to prevent another symbiote in the body of the Life Foundation chief executive from taking off in a company spacecraft with the intention of initiating an invasion of planet Earth.

Content: There is no sex or nudity but a lot of violence as Eddie/Venom bites people’s heads off, although not graphic in the version I saw. Eddie  falls out with his girl friend because he has hacked her computer. He comes up against Carlton Drake, the Life Foundation man and we see the symbiotes killing people until Venom gets together with Eddie. Thereafter a prolonged motor bike, car, drone chase. After Carlton Drake is also invaded there are a number of battles, one symbiote against another, which is apparently stronger, but with Eddie’s help it seems possible that Venom will prevail.

A View: Well, what would we make of this? Some of the negative reviews are due to Venom’s appearance in one of the Spiderman films, and Spiderman is not in this film. But on a production budget of about $100 million it has grossed $856 million. The critics also disliked the long first act, which I actually enjoyed. When we get to the final act and the central activity is a rocket taking off the plot becomes less and less viable. And finally of course, how does Venom know  his name considering that he is an alien life form? But I see that you can download it for a bargain €1.95. Had I paid that I would not have felt that I had been overcharged.

Additional Info: The first Venom film script had been written by David S. Goyer in 1997.  Since then the character has been almost constantly associated with Spiderman.