Venom (PG-13)
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Caution: spoilers.

So, this came out in 2018, but I didn't see it until 2024, by which time I thought it had come out probably a few years earlier than it actually did. And there's a nearly post-credits scene at the end featuring a look at Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which came out a few months later in 2018, but which I was sure came out at least a couple years later than that. So I was surprised about seeing those scenes, thinking like, wow, how long was that movie in development, that they could have had scenes from it in this movie? But I was wrong. Oh well. In any event, this is the first movie in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, a franchise that doesn't seem to actually involve Spider-Man himself, just characters that originally appeared in Spider-Man comic books. I'm not super familiar with Venom, I mean I'm not sure I've ever actually read any comics with him in them, so I just know him from a few different Spider-Man movies or TV shows. And he's always a villain, but here he's an anti-hero. Which I guess he became in the comics, too, but that's not something I was really aware of. It's hard for me to say whether this movie would be better appreciated by people who've read Venom comics or by people who haven't. But I'm guessing the latter, because I liked it. I mean, I didn't love it or anything, but I thought it was good. (Whereas the day after I watched the movie, and before I started my review, I watched Council of Geeks' review on YouTube. They said it was okay, but had several problems with it that I didn't have. And I expect they're more familiar with the character than I am.) And generally speaking, the movie did considerably worse with most critics than it did with Council of Geeks. But it did well enough financially to warrant a sequel, which I look forward to seeing someday.

Anyway, there's this guy named Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), an investigative journalist with his own TV show, on which he typically exposes many of society's problems. He has a fiancée named Anne (Michelle Williams), a lawyer whose firm is currently representing the Life Foundation, a corporation run by a guy named Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), who I would describe as Elon-esque. But actually worse. He has goals that I can agree with (which is hard to say about Elon, these days), but his methods are reprehensible. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Um... Eddie's boss assigns him to do a puff piece on Drake, which Eddie isn't happy about, because he knows Drake is a bad person. And so, without Anne's knowledge, he reads a private e-mail about Drake that was sent to her by her firm, and uses the info he gains from it to make accusations against Drake. This gets both himself and Anne fired, and she breaks up with him. (Quite justifiably, I mean I don't care what Eddie's intentions were, that was utterly unprofessional and a real dick move.)

Six months later, Eddie is approached by a Life Foundation scientist named Dora Skirth (Jenny Slate), who wants him to expose Drake's unethical practices, which have led to the deaths of volunteers that Drake uses as test subjects to bond with (CGI) symbiotes that the corporation had found in space and brought back to Earth. I should also mention that the shuttle carrying the symbiotes crashed in Malaysia at the start of the movie, and one of the symbiotes (named Riot, as we later learn) got loose and began possessing a series of people, making its way to San Francisco, where the Life Foundation is headquartered. How it knew to go there I'm not really sure, but probably it gained knowledge from one of the shuttle crew that it briefly possessed. Anyway, Dr. Skirth sneaks Eddie into the Life Foundation labs, where a symbiote named Venom bonds with him. Eddie doesn't know what's going on at first, but he starts hearing a voice in his head, and his behavior, particularly his eating habits, becomes erratic. He eventually gets some help from Anne's new boyfriend, a surgeon named Dan Lewis, who discovers he has a "parasite" (though Venom really doesn't like being called that). Meanwhile, Drake finds out from Skirth who the missing symbiote had infected, and sends security personnel to retrieve the symbiote from Eddie. But the symbiote is very good at protecting itself, and plenty of people end up dead. Eventually Eddie learns to get along with Venom and work together, setting down some rules for the symbiote, like not eating good people. Cause yeah, it eats people. Venom reveals that his people intend to invade Earth, but he's had a change of heart after getting to know Eddie, and wants to stop Riot, the leader of the symbiotes, who eventually finds and possesses Drake.

And... I feel like I've probably said too much already, so I won't reveal any more of the plot. But I found it reasonably entertaining. And I did agree with some of Drake's feelings about problems with the world, so he could have been a good guy, if not for his solution to those problems being an even bigger problem, and his methods of trying to attain that solution. (There are any number of villains like that in movies, I guess. Killmonger springs to mind.) Oh, and there's a mid-credits scene that I don't want to spoil, but it sets up the sequel. And I guess I don't know what else to say.