In order to understand how low my expectations were for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, think about some of the movies that have come out this year that should have been entertaining, but absolutely crapped the bed. Without Remorse, Mortal Combat, F9, and Snake Eyes were terrible and that is coming right on the heels of the abomination that was Wonder Woman 1984. And I only expected one of those movies to be non-stupid. Then, think about the first Venom film. It was so unremarkable that I remember almost nothing about it, including that I said to only ask for half your money back. To be fair, that film came out in 2018, which was roughly three hundred years ago, so it’s mostly a vague memory at this point.
(Not a lot to SPOILER, but there is one thing in the movie worth keeping a secret.)
A friend of mine asked if they needed to watch Venom before watching Let There Be Carnage. Answer? No. Really no. It’s not like Sony had some grand plan for Venom. This is the same company that killed the Spider-Man franchise…twice. This is the same company that got into a pissing match with Marvel over how to split the money that Marvel made them after Marvel fixed Spider-Man. Venom was nothing more than Tom Hardy arguing with himself in two different, equally obnoxious voices, except when it was nothing more than two CGI blobs swirling around a clearly bored Michelle Williams.
The only thing we need to know is that Venom is an alien symbiote attached to reporter Eddie Brock (Hardy) that sometimes appears as a black tentacle with a face attached to Eddie’s back, sometimes engulfs Eddie’s body as a black, muscular, nightmare, acid-trip Spider-Man, and sometimes is nothing more than Hardy yelling lines at himself in his worst Batman voice. This kind of worked in Venom, at least enough to feel fresh, but it gets annoying fast in Let There Be Carnage. You’ll be glad to be distracted by chickens a few minutes into the film. That’s right, chickens.
What little plot exists in Let There Be Carnage is thin enough as to be invisible. Venom wants to eat the brains of criminals, but Eddie has him on a diet of chickens and chocolate. They bicker like an old married couple and a lot of things in Eddie’s apartment get broken. Then, they have a breakup of sorts. Worst romantic comedy ever.
Meanwhile, serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) is about to be executed and wants Eddie to tell Cletus’ story to the world. You know, for reasons. When Eddie gets too close to Cletus’ cage, Cletus bites Eddie and gets some Eddie-Venom blood in his mouth. We see the blood jiggling on its own and this is how Carnage comes to be. No, seriously. It is a known fact that if you bite a symbiote-infected human, it will birth a brand new symbiote and be red because…human blood is red. It’s better known in medical circles as the Reverse Zombie.
Obviously, Cletus escapes his execution now that he has Carnage to provide super powers. Now-free Cletus wants to rescue his past love interest, Shriek (Naomie Harris), from a secret lab/prison. He and Carnage agree that after they bust her out, they will exact revenge on Venom, Eddie, and the cop that captured Shriek so many years ago. Again, for reasons. In movie circles, this plot is better known as the Sony shit-take.
That’s it. That’s the whole movie. Like its predecessor, Let There Be Carnage is thin on plot, heavy on Tom Hardy trying to prove we’ve all overestimated his acting chops, more of Michelle Williams looking really confused as to how she ended up in a non-tear-jerking, non-Oscar-bait, non-drama, Woody Harrelson being directed to just go nuts man, and of course, more swirling CGI blobs fighting each other. And, it doesn’t even have the decency to be rated-R. To be fair, I knew going in that this would be what it was. I was mildly curious as to how Andy Serkis would do as director and the answer was what if Gollum had won? But, my curiosity ended there. The only saving graces of the movie were its short running time (97 minutes) and jaw-dropping mid-credits scene. Turns out, Sony might have just learned something in their fight with Marvel.
Rating: Ask for all your money back because it met my expectations.
If you were to make a list of video games you would most like to see adapted into movies, I am guessing that list would include exactly zero classic arcade games. I have never expressed a desire to see a Galaga or Centipede movie on the silver screen nor have I heard any other mammal express that desire. The reasoning is simple - those games have no story on which to base a movie. Ironically, that reasoning means some of those same games are the safest to adapt because there is no legion of middle-aged nerds freaking out because Hollywood crapped on their childhood memories or ruined a fantastic game. Thus, we have Rampage, a movie based on a game in which players are tasked with destroying buildings using the fists of one of three (two if you only played the NES version, like me) giant creatures. All the movie had to do to pay respect to the game was offer up rationale, no matter how absurd, for the existence of the creatures and why they would attack buildings. And, they did not hold back on the absurdity.
(SPOILER ALERT for obligatory reasons, not because you do not know what happens in this movie.)
The biggest absurdity of this film is how hard the four screenwriters worked to explain nonsense. The film kicks off in space. Chew on that for a moment. Alarms are sounding on a space station and a frantic astronaut is trying to escape from a giant mutant rat that has killed everyone else on board, but her (remote) corporate overlords will not let her leave without grabbing the scientific research on board the station. She escapes in the nick of time, but her capsule explodes upon reentry and the three cylinders containing the research plummet to Earth. Goodbye ten minutes of your life. That is the explanation given for how a gorilla named George, a wolf, and an alligator become gigantic, destructive monsters and it was completely unnecessary. The movie should have just begun with the three capsules streaking through the sky, but I am not four different writers, am I?
Do not think about why the gator grew orders of magnitude larger than George or the wolf.
Davis Okoye (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is a primatologist (he said while chuckling and remembering the time Denise Richards played a nuclear scientist) who has worked with George for George’s entire life. Their relationship is so close that Davis can decipher anything George says (through sign-language), taught George how to flip the bird, and prefers the company of George (and other animals) over humans, including a very attractive woman who invites Davis to show her his other monkey. By the sheer pull of Johnson’s animal magnetism, one of the research capsules lands in the gorilla enclosure and sprays green mist in George’s face. The next morning, Davis discovers George is much bigger and killed a grizzly bear, but this movie is rated PG-13 so no gorilla-vs-bear action in a movie about rampaging animals.
Meanwhile, the corporate overlords are revealed to be Claire and Brett Wyden (Malin Akerman and Jake Lacy, respectively). They send out private soldiers to track down the capsules and kill the mutant wolf, but that plan does not go well. Plan B is to turn on a giant radio that will attract the beasts to the tower formally known as Sears so they can collect DNA samples and sell this weaponized DNA for profit. Do not worry; they have a cure. I promise that plan is flawless as long as you ignore every part of that same plan. Suffice it to say, the animals race to Chicago to destroy the signal and everything in their path.
It’s okay; that bear was a jerk.
(Side note and pet peeve: these same two siblings funded a space station, yet their stated goal here is to make money? Four writers, everybody.)
The other big absurdity of this film was the casting. This is par for the course for Johnson, who is this generation’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, but without the overt soldier aspect, but every other recognizable actor in this film should have had better things to do. Akerman might be the worst villain this decade, but she sure tries to look the part when she scrunches up her face to look like a big meanie. Lacy is obviously there for the comedic support, but none of the four writers appear to be familiar with the concept of humor and treat his character as nothing more than a bad pun. But nobody is more out of place than Jeffrey Dean Morgan playing a special agent playing a birthday-party version of Negan, complete with chrome plated pistol and rodeo-sized belt buckle because carrying Lucille around would be copyright infringement. Morgan’s performance is so ridiculous that you probably will not notice that Naomie Harris (playing Dr. Kate Caldwell) is laughably atrocious and literally an actor in this movie. Not that I blame her or Morgan completely, considering the dialogue they were forced to memorize and repeat out loud, but yeeesh.
Don’t worry, bad acting won’t affect the box office of a movie like this.
I know many of you cannot wait to tell me how much of a film snob I am and that this movie was not intended to win Oscars, but remember I am the same person who enjoyed Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunter. This movie is not bad because I am a film critic, it is bad because four writers, a director, a studio, and a bunch of producers forgot they were making a movie based on a game whose entire story is its own title. This movie should have been all kinds of fun to watch, but the never-ending exposition coupled with rampant inconsistencies (why does only the wolf get the power of flight and porcupine quills and why do the other animals grow so much larger than George?) nearly put my theater’s entire audience into a coma. And don’t even get me started on how asinine it was how George was cured (the cure being the animal just stops wanting to kill everything). I just wanted to enjoy a mindless movie while on a work trip and all I could think of during the movie was how the game was better. Some buildings did get destroyed in the movie, so mission accomplished, I guess.
Rating: Ask for thirteen dollars back because movies do not cost ten dollars any more, like they did when I started writing these things.
Ranking things has become a staple of American media and might be what they spend the most time and effort on. From power rankings to best-of rankings to “which candidate was the least deplorable during last night’s (pick your party) debate” rankings, they have majorly impacted the way news is presented and consumed. Heck, I do it myself every year in my annual Year in Review piece. So, with the release of James Bond 24 – Spectre – it was predictable that nearly every entertainment outlet would rank all things James Bond. From Bond Girls to villains to henchman to cars to gadgets to the movies themselves, those sites ranked everything short of Bond haircuts (and it wouldn’t surprise me if a search turned that up as well). While these are fun exercises, they get old after the thousandth one written and are always biased depending (mostly) on the age of the writer (if you want to test that theory, find a baby boomer and tell him Pierce Brosnan was a better Bond than Sean Connery. Then, duck the incoming punch). I’m not going to rank anything here, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least answer a similar question – how does Spectre compare with the other Daniel Craig Bond films?
Let’s just get this out of the way up front – Casino Royale was a nearly perfect film and none of the subsequent Bond films have come close to matching it (I didn’t write a full review of Skyfall, but I found it slightly overrated, as noted in my 2012 Year in Review). Having said that, I enjoyed all of them because they are well-produced, Craig is fantastic, my wife will go see them with me, and they are better than nearly every other action movie out there. Spectre is no different, delivering well on all three of those qualities. However, some chinks in the armor are beginning to show.
Spectre is a bit of a throwback to pre-Craig iterations. Remember all of the jokes in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me that ridicule the clichés of Bond flicks? Well, pretty much every one of those clichés was on full display in Spectre and, disappointingly, the movie was only aware of one of them (I’ll get to them in a moment). To me, the lack of these clichés is what made the previous Craig films so good and refreshing, so bringing them back was a head-scratcher. So, let’s talk about them.
Opening Song
Adele set a very high standard with “Skyfall,” so following it up was going to be a tough chore for anyone. Unfortunately, Sam Smith and the producers decided not to even try. I’ve always wanted to use the word caterwauling and singer Sam Smith was caterwauling with the best of them in “Writing’s on the Wall,” one of the worst openers for any Bond movie. Smith himself said it took half an hour to write the song and the demo version was used in the final cut of the film. I’m guessing the folks who approved had listened to the demo shortly after firing guns without wearing ear protection. Guys, that ringing in your ears wasn’t exploding gunpowder, it was Smith.
Gadgets
Previous Craig films wisely stayed away from the silly gadgets of yesteryear, but director Sam Mendes apparently thought it was time to bring them back. Exploding watch? Check. 60’s era toggle switches in Bond’s car to set off fire, bullets, and ejector seat? Check. Nanobots in Bond’s blood to track his vitals and location? Check. Headshakes from me every time one of these appeared? Check. To be fair, the film is mildly aware of this trope, adding a toggle switch in the car for pre-selected music (the car was intended for agent 009) and, upon receiving the watch from Q (Ben Whishaw), Bond asks “Does it do anything?” to which Q responds “It tells the time.”
Bond Car
Every Bond movie has a car chase (or four) and this one features an Aston Martin DB10 with the previously mentioned toggle switches. Every Bond movie also wrecks Bond’s car, which I find tired. I know it goes along with the recklessness of Bond’s character, but couldn’t we save the car just once? Or at least, can’t Q give him a car that doesn’t cost three million pounds (Q actually tells us the cost, which also made me wonder why he used ten cent toggle switches. Whatever).
Bond Girls
Some people think Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) counts as a Bond girl, but I don’t think so. Bond girls are one of two things – the damsel in distress or part of the villain’s gang (or both). Sleeping with Bond does not make a Bond girl, though all Bond girls sleep with him. That leaves Dr. Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) – damsel, and Lucia Sciarra (Monica Bellucci) – part of the gang (though only by marriage). Nothing sets these two apart from most Bond girls, especially Bellucci, who serves no purpose in the film other than to have sex with Bond after Bond eliminates her assassin husband. But, hey, they’re hot so…mission accomplished?
Henchmen
Did anybody miss the villain’s right hand man? Me either. But what true Bond villain doesn’t have a cartoon character henchman to execute his evil plans? Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista) fills out that role while almost over-filling out his suits. His job is busting heads without asking questions and if he had any lines at all, I don’t remember them. He doesn’t have metal teeth or razor-edged hats, but he does like to kill people by pushing his fingers through their eyes, so he achieves the same effect – ewww, gross.
Villain
The villains all tend to be the same – super intelligent sociopaths with ridiculously complex evil plots and some quirk. Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz) is the leader of the evil organization called Spectre, which contained Quantum, the previous evil organization thought to be THE evil organization. Franz claims to be the one responsible for all of the bad things that happened in the last three movies and to that I say – really? But he’s not done. He’s also trying to get a system approved and online that connects national surveillance systems all into one system that he would control because…um…hmmmmm. Actually, we never find out. He’s actually pissed off at Bond for a completely unrelated reason – and had daddy issues – thus creating the wildly convoluted plot of Spectre. And Franz has a cat, aka – his quirk.
The “Death Ray”
Invoking The Spy Who Shagged Me again, remember when the bad guys capture Powers and the villain decided to kill Powers with an elaborately designed device, but the villain’s son says “why don’t we just shoot him right now? Here, I even have a gun” and the villain argues with his son? Yeah, well, Franz has a remote controlled chair will drills on either side that he uses to drill holes into Bond’s head. Egads.
The Lair
Every villain has to have an absurdly elaborate lair, right? The villain in Quantum of Solace had a hotel in the middle of the Bolivian desert, powered by hydrogen-fuel cells. The villain in Skyfall had an abandoned village/island filled with computer servers. Franz has an energy-independent compound inside a crater in Africa in which his surveillance system is housed. Also, the drill chair is there. I rest my case.
Political Content
Every Bond movie reflects current real-life politics. In addition to mass surveillance, Spectre throws in drones, plus, another worn-out trope – the spy agency is obsolete, so must be dissolved. If there’s one thing to truly dislike about this movie it’s the idea that MI6 needs to be dissolved because we have drones now. I’m pretty sure a Predator drone is incapable of wearing a suit and dancing without someone noticing that it’s an airplane.
If you’re like me, you will be disappointed that this movie took several steps backward by bringing back many of the silly tropes and clichés that previous Craig movies had seemingly (and thankfully) moved beyond. But, you will forgive that for the reasons mentioned earlier (production, etc., etc.), plus good performances from Ralph Fiennes (M) and Andrew Scott (C – you know him as Moriarty in Sherlock). And if you still want to know where Spectre ranks, even in just the four Craig movies, I’d say Brosnan over Connery.
Rating: Ask for a dollar back because there really should be a penalty for Mendes caving in to nostalgia.
Keep it simple, stupid.
