Writing Movie “WRONGS”

By Jim West

 

Venom:  Let there Be Carnage

Directed by Andy Serkis

Written by Tom Hardy and Kelly Marcel

 

Fans have been wanting a Venom film for years, and every time a studio makes an attempt it always seems to falter as what fans really want is a R rated film.  What we got instead was a PG-13 version which is not shabby, but not as great as most fans really wanted.  Yet we got Tom Hardy playing the role of Eddie Brock, and with that kind of star power you got to appeal to the masses.  In the first film in 2018 and now this one, we get to explore life with a symbiote a bit more and the love/hate relationship both are in with the boundaries and compromises they make in their relationship.  Venom has often been portrayed as an anti-hero and often times villain.  Here we get a heaping dose of comedy with the character, and it sometimes falls flat.  Comedy is so hard to write and with just two writers (one being Tom Hardy), I feel this film needed a comedy writer to assist.

Here comes the spoilers.

Film opens with a tragic story of boy, Cletus Kasady, meets super powered girl, Frances Barrison.  Frances has the ability to manipulate her vocals to cause devastating injuries.  While being taken by a young police officer, Patrick Mulligan, she escapes using her powers.  During the escape she gets shot in the eye and Kasady presumes she is dead, but she is just taken to a secured facility.  Years later a grown Kasady is now a serial killer on death row.  He requests to speak only to Eddie Brock about his victims and with Venom’s powers of deduction is able to lead Brock to Kasady’s last victims bodies.  Kasady invites Eddie to attend his execution, and during the visit Kasady starts to insult Eddie and Venom attacks Kasady who bites back and ingests part of the symbiote.  Later the symbiote grows inside of Kasady and during his execution prevents him from dying and helps him escape the prison.  Meanwhile Eddie and Venom get into a disagreement over Venom’s desire to feed on bad guys and they separate and part ways.

Kasady and the symbiote, named Carnage, make a agreement that Carnage will help Kasady free Frances and he will help Carnage kill Venom.  They set off on a rampage through the city and that prompts Venom and Eddie to make amends and unite to fight against this new threat.   The final showdown happens in a church and as cliché as that setting is, it serves the purpose of having a large bell handy when it comes to dealing with symbiotes.  It resolves with Eddie and Venom finding themselves in Mexico on a beach in hiding from the law.

In short the film hits most of the same beats of the first film.  The best moments are when Eddie and Venom are negotiating their shared existence.  I think this film would have benefited from playing more with that angle of the story.    The scenes with Eddie’s ex-fiance, Anne, start to go down this story road but stops short of doing anything really good with the idea of Venom wanting Eddie and her back together.  I would have written in a scene where Venom tries to cause Anne’s new fiance grief like mess with his car, home, at his work to cause him discomfort not necessarily harm him.  That would have offered more comic relief and showed off Venom’s twisted sense of humor.  Perhaps in the next film we can see Venom flex more of his comedic chops instead of his muscles.

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