*. More CGI sludge from Marvel. I wish I could be more upbeat about this one, but that’s all it is.
*. As I said in my notes on Venom (which also left me underwhelmed), the character of the dark alien symbiote has potential. But it’s still left undeveloped. Tom Hardy plays journalist Eddie Brock without the scruffy charm of a Ryan Reynolds or Paul Rudd. He just doesn’t seem a good fit for a project like this because while the material might be a bit darker than usual, it’s still an action comedy, a buddy movie where the buddies inhabit the same body.
*. The core of the film should be the bickering between Eddie and Venom, who are often made out to be an odd couple heading for a divorce even though they need each other. But their back-and-forth just isn’t fresh or funny.
*. Meanwhile, the villains are another poorly matched pair. First there’s Woody Harrelson as Cletus, a redneck serial killer on death row who gets infected by the symbiote when he bites Eddie. Which I guess isn’t quite as silly as Peter Parker being bitten by a radioactive spider, but it’s right up there. Somehow the symbiote turns Cletus into a far more powerful creature than Venom named Carnage. Then, playing Harley Quinn to Carnage’s Joker is Naomie Harris as Shriek, a bad girl who can scream really loud. Since the symbiotes can’t stand loud noises this would seem to make them incompatible, but love may find a way. Or not, when it turns out three’s a crowd.
*. Harrelson and Harris should have been great in the parts but they are totally wasted playing villains who aren’t in the slightest bit interesting, thrown into a formulaic plot that has Cletus escaping from prison and springing Shriek from the Magneto-style soundproof prison she’s being kept in. Then they go after their revenge, which involves (yawn) kidnapping Eddie’s girlfriend so that he’ll have to come save her.
*. Without characters worth caring about or a story that qualifies as even remotely original all we’re left with is the usual jarring CGI slugfests, with Venom and Carnage tearing the city apart as they slam around defying the laws of physics and generally raising hell. More yawns. We’ve seen all this before, and to be honest I didn’t think the CGI work was even that good. Carnage’s tentacles looked pretty cheesy coming from a studio that should be state of the art all the way given their budgets and the amount of experience they have doing this sort of thing.
*. The only thing I can think of to say in this movie’s defence is that if it had come out ten years earlier I might have enjoyed it more. As a 2021 release it felt dead on arrival. Marvel deserves some grudging credit for keeping as much air in its various franchise balloons as it has for this long, what with the multiverses and shifty reboots, but at the end of the day they just don’t have anything new to bring to the table aside from what we’ve been gorging on for the last twenty years. Alas, with a global box office of over half a billion a third Venom film was promptly announced. Why are so many people paying money for this?
Alex on Film 
Why? Because people worship at the altar of entertainment. That’s not a metaphor but an almost literal interpretation of our culture today.
As for these, since I’m not watching superhero films anymore, I’m certainly not going to spend my valuable time on a villain being “not so bad as the other guy”. And as you noted, the story is pathetic. The majority of new movies seem to have lost the idea that the story needs to come first and foremost. I know we rehash this every couple of posts, but it bears repeating.
It seems like the story just boils down to “carnage.” And it’s all just running in place because none of these movies are going anywhere. You were wise to swear off superhero movies. I only have a couple more in me.
It probably “helped” (you) that you weren’t a big superhero fan to begin with. I was and when the stories started going off the rails, it was easier to let the movies go.
I know you said you were going to watch Eternals, but what else are you going to force yourself to suffer through?
I did a review of Shang-Chi that I’ll be posting in a week or so. It wasn’t good.
Haven’t been moved to see any more super hero movies due to all the above points, did the Eternals and that finished me off. So a nope from me.
The Eternals is the only one left I want to see. Even if it is a hate watch.
Doesn’t that exhaust you though?
Not usually. Though I was just reading Alex’s Review Corner and he mentioned that it’s 160 minutes, which did sound tiring.
Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. Re-watch some Charlie Chan movies for goodness sake. Or read a book. Do something good!
Hah it will be!
You MUST see The Eternals, it makes Carnage look like a proper film. Carnage opened bigger than the Bond film in the US, so there seems to be a build in audience for this. But I’m not really part of it, having grown out of superheroes when I got to 10 (1979, Blake Edwards). I guess this works if you like that kind of thing, but it aint good.
I’m almost done with Marvel. They couldn’t even get anything good out of Woody here. The tank is empty.
Live stream your viewing of the Eternals! I want to see your face as it all goes down…
The live streams are for my OnlyFans community. They’re pretty raw.
Movies like this I don’t watch out of protest. If it looked funny bad I’d happily give in, but it just looks and sounds as awful as I’ve always presumed.
It’s just the usual CGI-fest. Nothing about the characters or the story is interesting.
Y’know, I just had the thought that I probably would watch it if Topher Grace was in it. I’m a bit of a rebel and liked him in Spiderman 3. And Predators. Dude has those creepy “I’m possessed by an alien” eyes.