No One Cared Who I Was Until I Put On the Mask

Venom

starring Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Jenny Slate, Reid Scott, probably more people who even knows, none of them are Spider-Man

directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, 30 Minutes or Less, Gangster Squad)



I grew up dying for genre content, only never really in those words. That combination of syllables is definitely of the moment, like "alt-right" or "branding" or "Cardi B." Nobody knows what the fuck any of those things are before 2015, at least not in the current context. We definitely weren't characterizing entertainment as "content." I just knew that between The Last Starfighter in 1984 and, like, Independence Day in 1996, there were a lot of loooong years where studios assumed the potential audience for speculative fictional movies were isolated, asocial and poor, an archipelago of self-segregated emo-nerd bantustans clustered around comic book shops, ignored and misunderstood by the outside world. Now that I read it back, maybe "misunderstood" was overly generous.

This of course is a golden age of filmed entertainment. I know it's true because people have been insisting it at me quite loudly ever since about season three of The Sopranos. As the outlets proliferate, they perpetuate a hunger for more and more, demanding to be fed anything they can quickly and loudly process and regurgitate for the rest of us to look out before we get distracted and start looking at someone else's wretchings. This coincided with a renewed appetite for superhuman spectacle and the exponentially improving ability of digital artists to bring it to life with more and more verisimilitude at a (relatively) reasonable cost. It's really the Jurassic Park effect. Most of 21st century culture (or at least the end of what the 20th century thought was acceptable. I'm looking at you, Warrant) can be traced back to Jurassic Park and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" between 1991 and 1993.

The anomaly of the Tim Burton Batman films aside, movies based on comic books were too silly or childish or hopelessly dependent on deep prior knowledge of the convoluted worlds that had been building for 50, 60, 70 years in print to present to audiences. After the hybrid, half-self-apologetic X-Men in 2000, the attenuated virus that inoculated us against the cringey dorkiness of people with magic powers, the runaway explosive success of Spider-Man two years later meant Iron Man in 2008 and everything that has followed became more or less inevitable.

It's been a glorious, gluttonous orgy of flash* and CGI as the formerly closeted and cloistered like me have been let out not to smell the air and drink deeply from the stream, but to sip from the fire hose. How far have we come? 2018 has been the year of cultural think-pieces where we worry we've got TOO MUCH STAR WARS. What the fuck is even happening?

That's the context Venom has arrived in, unfortunately. I've often wondered where the peak of our current cultural moment would be. I have three teenaged boys who saw the trailers for this movie--starring what had been thought of as an edgy, dark super-cool Spider-Man villain-monster-antihero--and, in rare unison, shrugged. Well, that's some poetic license. Bored or disinterested kids no longer shrug. They just slowly drop their eyeline from whatever has failed them, back to the oblivion of their phone screens.

I saw this movie without my boys, which was already weird. I hadn't planned really to catch it myself (though I was at least curious, and well aware that at some point the comic book movies will stop, so I know I should get what I can while I can), but I had a date who was keen,** so we did.

And I have to say... it was about how I thought it would be. I should say that I have an irrational love for Tom Hardy. I know he makes weird-ass choices sometimes, especially with his voice. But catch him in his occasional guest spots on Netflix's Peaky Blinders where we drops in on an already unbelievable cast and elevates everyone's game to further fizzy heights. It's my favorite acting thing ever. Probably because it only comes in small doses, sure, but that's just another good choice (not his, but still).

Yep, he does weird things with his voice. Nobody in the world knows what accent he's supposed to be doing. New York by way of... Kansas City? Cheyenne? Some other place where most people couldn't tell you if there is a regional accent associated with it or not. He also does the voice of the symbiote,*** so that's a whole layer of secondary weird-ass choices to make, but those actually end up being more straightforward, believe it or not.

Venom is fine. It's not the disaster I thought it was going to be. There are only two things wrong with it. First: Michelle Williams is fine. And Michelle Williams should NEVER EVER EVER BE just "fine." Go watch Manchester by the Sea again. She's got the capability to be the most human human on any screen. Her together with Tom Hardy is a rare and magical pairing, like chateaubriand and... whatever wine really goes with that kind of steak. I don't really drink. Should've left that metaphor alone.

Instead, Michelle (primarily, but the audience as well) are punished with a lamely perfunctory first act rushing through some rote emotional "stakes" where a transcendent artist is reduced to a plot obstruction to be endured by the protagonist. Later she dangles off stuff and is occasionally imperiled. They had a Stradivarius and decided to knock out "Shave and a Haircut."

Second, this movie never deviates from exactly what you think it might be. It's an origin story, at the end of which the new hero has to fight a bad guy with the exact same super powers, but you know, bigger and darker and love-interest-imperiling. Yes, there were some funny moments. But nothing about this is compelling. My kids certainly weren't compelled. And they're DYING to see Aquaman. What does that tell you?


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*But apparently not the actual Flash. At least not any time soon, ironically.

**to see the movie, you pervert.

***I get to say symbiote in a movie review. Still very aware of how lame/cool that is.