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17th October 2018
07:58pm BST

And Venom definitely delivers on the Tom Hardy front.
For the first 30 minutes or so, Venom is shockingly bad. It lumbers through generic expositions scenes with the bare minimum of competency.
And then something curious happens. Just as the first act comes to a close, it is as if the movie itself becomes self-aware, realises it is a boring pile of crap and thinks, fuck it, let’s just go batshit crazy and does a load of dumb shit to entertain itself.
Essentially, Tom Hardy takes the idea of being possessed by an alien symbiote as an excuse to just go completely over the top. We get Tom Hardy walking down the street mumbling inherently to himself. Tom Hardy, rummaging through bins, looking for rotten chicken. Tom Hardy, screaming in a posh restaurant then jumping in the lobster tank.
He even goes full-Oldboy and takes a big bite of a live crustacean.
It is at this point where the movie just stops trying to be this dark, serious horror and embraces what any Venom movie should have been - a goofy buddy comedy with Tom Hardy teaming up with the voice in Tom Hardy’s head. The Venom symbiote basically takes on the personality of Beavis and/or Butt-Head, calling Hardy a "pussy" for not wanting to jump off a skyscraper and straight-up admitting he is a dweeb on his own planet. It is all just so silly and joyous.
It came out the same year as Black Panther and Infinity War, and to be fair, they were probably objectively better films. But Venom has gone down as another reason to love Tom Hardy. It’s not his greatest his performance, but it one of most enjoyable.
Plus, ****SPOILER****, at the end of the film they introduce Woody Harrelson as Venom’s nemesis Carnage. And the idea of both Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson going gonzo-crazy in the same movie is something that needs to happen.Explore more on these topics:

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