journal features

movie review - Venom: Let There Be Carnage

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Kokubunji, 2022.07.09

In this sequel to "Venom", a sloppy sci-fi/super-hero movie featuring a human and his alien "parasite". Oddly enough, they made a sequel and are continuing to ignore the original purpose of the Venom character, which was as a counterpart to Spider-Man.

If the first plot felt made-up-on-the-spot, this one has far more emotional content. The bad guy is another human/symbiote pairing, and a dangerous mix of aggrieved and unstable. Naturally, the two halves click immediately and do maximum damage at every turn, while our hero/heros struggle to work together. And naturally, the human half of the opposition has a love interest, and she's just as unhinged as he is.

This movie is significantly better than the original, perhaps because it's trying to stay in one lane rather than weave between sci-fi and heroics.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

—Roald Dahl