--Cletus Kasady, Venom: Let There Be Carnage
It should not be surprising to anyone who saw the first Venom and has watched the trailers for Venom: Let There Be Carnage that the sequel turns out to fall far short of being anything close to The Dark Knight, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Logan, Wonder Woman, Joker, or any of the other top tier comic book movies. It is not that it had no potential. With the legendary Andy Serkis directing and Woody Harrelson cast as the infamous and brutal host for the Carnage symbiote, this movie had a genuine chance for excellence if the same mistakes in the first movie were avoided. Most of them are repeated even as more mistakes are added. For instance, at only around an hour and a half long, Venom: Let There Be Carnage does not even have the length to give its characters substantial development. The comedy is just relentless sometimes--and not in a way that is helpful for the story and the themes the film could have tackled.
Production Values
To clarify some of the better aspects, Woody Harrelson as Cletus Kasady and at least one of the scenes with the Carnage symbiote are actually handled somewhat well. The Carnage of larger Marvel lore is of course a far more philosophically provocative and utterly brutal character and is explicitly aimed at a more mature audience than Harrelson's Carnage is, but that is not his fault. Moreover, even though Tom Hardy has a role full of tonally incoherent lines and acting, he does a great job of bringing what the director and studio seemed to want to life. Naomi Harris, Michelle Williams, and almost everyone else is a side character with minimal screen time, but when the movie is only around 90 minutes long and very little actually happens, even the two titular characters are not developed or showcased in any sort of thematically or artistically deep way.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Having reclaimed his journalism job, Eddie Brock navigates daily life with his symbiotic companion. He has to deal with more personal issues like watching his former lover get engaged to someone else and coexisting with an extraterrestrial predator of sorts--and then serial killer Cletus Kasady escapes prison after Eddie interviews him, bonding with Venom's symbiotic offspring he intakes by biting Eddie's hand. There is actually very little to the movie that does not reduce down to one of these plot points or something pertaining to Shriek, Cletus Kasasy's romantic partner whom he breaks out of a psychiatric prison so the two can, as the name of his new symbiote suggests, create sheer carnage.
Intellectual Content
Seemingly, almost no effort at all went into crafting the characterization and philosophical underpinnings of Let There Be Carnage. The creators could have done so much better adapting the source material or even just with conveying the worldview and personal side of Cletus Kasady. Yes, he is presented as bent on murder and apathetic towards most people at best, but his nihilism in the comics, the non sequitur philosophical assumptions that led to it, and the non sequitur conclusions he draws from it are nowhere to be found. Perhaps the one side of the story with a minimal degree of substance is the way symbiotes and their human hosts relate to each other as they try to unite--or use each other for personal gain. In a waste of what could have been strong characters that illustrated key logical facts about interpersonal understanding or conflict, even the contrast between how Venom and Eddie reunite after lashing out at each other and how Carnage and Cletus do not even share the same goals turns out to be barely developed.
Conclusion
This incarnation of Venom would be out of place alongside the symbiote pseudo-deity Knull or a more comic-accurate (according to what I have read and heard) portrayal of Carnage. He is so tied down by useless or exaggerated comedy that the deeper issues of forming a bond with a carnivorous alien creature and considering vigilantism or what is or is not just to do to unjustly violent people get scarcely any attention. Tom Hardy is not the problem. Woody Harrelson, Naomi Harris, and Michelle Williams are not the problem. Abysmal dialogue, lame or overused attempts to be funny, an extremely short runtime for a movie like this, and the toning down of the real thematic potential are the problems, and they are numerous. Let There Be Carnage is what happens when talented people fail to utilize their actual talent. The mid-credits scene is still massive in its ramifications for the MCU and Sony's "Venom-verse" in upcoming years. In fact, it is superior to almost everything else in the actual movie that precedes it, just not in a positive sense because the core film is a thorough display of storytelling ineptitude.
Content:
1. Violence: The events onscreen completely lack the very thing the title promises. People are killed, but almost always either onscreen or with little to no actual brutality involved.
2. Profanity: "Damn," "shit," and "bitch" are used. The one "fuck" allotted to PG-13 movies is saved for near the end.
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