My Review of "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"

Venom: Let There Be Carnage has recently come out. It's the sequel to the original 2018 Venom movie. While the first movie was okay I had some high hopes for the second movie. The venom we remember from the old comic books was a violent and edgier character. His violence was exacerbated with the addition of Carnage. That's what I was expecting anyways. In a way I kind of got what I wanted but it was exactly what I was expecting.

The movie starts off not too long after the original Venom movie finished off. Eddie is still down on his luck but he's starting to make a comeback as a journalist. Due to Eddie's journalistic prowess he was able to put a serial killer by the name of Cletus on death row.

Cletus is a disturbed killer but he's had his heart on a woman named Frances. The two fell in love when they were young adults in some sort of mental institute. That is until Francis with some miraculous superhuman power breaks out of the institute. During her pursuit of freedom she's shot by a police officer and was sent to a high security mental ward in secret. As for as everyone else is concerned, she died from the incident.

I don't know how but Cletus somehow believes she is still alive. His last wish was to use Eddie to advertise a poem to the newspaper he works for. In exchange Cletus would provide Eddie with information of all of his wrongdoings he's ever done. This would catapult Eddie into some sort of journalistic superstardom so he obviously agrees.

In doing this exchange somehow Cletus extracts a small piece of Venom into him to become Carnage. That's basically how the movie starts and in some ways it was done nicely but the tone of the movie was a little too lighthearted.

We also have to consider the fact that this movie was made to be a family friendly movie but in some ways I thought that this movie shouldn't have been. It kind of ruined the tone and essence of the Venom and Carnage characters. You can tell from this film that they are supposed to be brooding violent characters. It's such a weird contrast to see all the bad jokes flying at you. There are a few chuckles here and there but you can tell that a lot of the jokes were geared towards kids and forced.

The best comparison of this movie is probably the Joss Whedon's Justice League movie. It's not an absolutely terrible movie but there are a lot of inconsistencies as to the character and the tone of the movie. If this movie had a more darker edge to it, this could have been more fun. Then again I have to consider that this movie is technically part of the Marvel universe so this movie's tone wouldn't make sense with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) either.

This movie is a bit of a conundrum. It's sort of trying to see how the original Fox X-Men would fit into the MCU. The two universes contrast like night and day. If the two should fit into a movie it would be tough to mix the two atmospheres into one movie. It can be done though, at least I think so.

If I remember correctly, the first movie wasn't that great but at least they had a good relationship story between Eddie and Anne. This movie's relationship is with Cletus and Frances. They didn't even do that story that well. They could have dived a little deeper into Cletus' story as to why he's the way he was. It's explained but they could have drove it home a little more. The fact that Frances had these unexplained powers kind of dulled the story as well.

Overall, I didn't really like this movie. I thought it was a little bit of a stinker. They basically made this movie to benefit from the popularity of the characters. Unfortunately the tone of the movie didn't fit the tone of the characters in this movie. I have to give this movie a 5 out of 10. It was very much a boring movie but some comic fans may enjoy it a little. Kids might actually like it a lot though.