Mr. Movie review: ‘Venom’ is a Marvel masterpiece

These days we get what seems to be a Marvel superhero movie a week. Next up for comic book — and other Marvel fans — is Venom. He’s a Symbiote — a creature from outer space who needs a host to survive.

Venom’s host is journalist Eddie Brock.

He and the others of his species — like the sinister Riot — are brought to Earth by mad scientist and greedy entrepreneur Carlton Drake. He wants to use the life forms to make humans better able to travel in space and uses questionable — no, make that downright evil — scientific methods to get the job done.

The Symbiotes must have the right host to do their thing. Most humans and other species don’t survive the melding. Brock does. He doesn’t quite understand what’s happening to him at first but as the story moves on, the plan becomes clear.

For humans, Brock is a bit of a screw-up. So — it seems — is Venom.

Tom Hardy plays Brock and Venom, Riz Ahmed (“The Sisters Brothers”) does Drake and Michelle Williams is Brock’s ex-fiancee. Ruben Fleischer — who did “Zombieland” and “Gangster Squad” — directs and treats “Venom” much like those two films. Translation: it’s laugh-out-loud funny and fun from start to the two hints of movies to come embedded in the credits.

Fleischer’s only directing flaw is some of the battle sequences and the Venom-Riot conflicts are done so fast and edited so poorly that sometimes it’s hard to figure out what’s happening. I saw this in 2D. Maybe they work better in the 3D version.

For me, it’s a minor problem but one nonetheless.

What really makes “Venom” work is Hardy’s comic skills. You totally buy that he’s a man surprised about a creature from another world sharing his body. He bing-bongs about the movie and has you totally convinced that he’s two individual beings.

While a lot of what happens to Brock is CGI and motion-capture, the job of selling the character is up to Hardy. As he does with everything he’s been in, Hardy brings it in every scene. This is a very, very good piece of acting.

He does, however, get a lot of help from the script. This one is done by screenwriters whose experience goes from “Gangster Squad” to “The Dark Tower” to “Saving Mr. Banks” and to — here’s an odd one — “Fifty Shades of Grey.” It is totally tongue-in-cheek and keeps the standard Marvel superhero movie schtick from poisoning “Venom.”

This will be — by far — the most fun to be had in a theater this weekend. “Venom” is a Marvel masterpiece.

This story was originally published October 4, 2018 at 12:38 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie review: ‘Venom’ is a Marvel masterpiece."