Turd In The Wind Movie

Sony have a history of screwing Spider-Man movies up. Look at Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2….definately not great movies that’s for sure.

Spider-Man 3 was awful…too many villains, and they were played badly…especially Venom. Topher Grace wasn’t a great choice and just seemed to act weak, which made Venom seem lame in the movie….and well, the less said about the emo Peter phase in the movie the better.

The Amazing Spider-Man movies were not much better… In fact they were pretty bad. Andrew Garfield tried his best to be Spider-Man, but he just didn’t cut it. He just didn’t have the charm of Toby Maguire and felt gangly (I guess that was a good thing for the Peter Parker character, but not the the Spider-Man character though). Then the villains just seemed to rely too much on CGI which was a real pity. The only good thing about these movies if the first one has got what I think is the best Stan Lee cameo.

Things then got better with Spider-Man Homecoming, but that was because Marvel was actually involved. Finally, Spidey was in the MCU (Although introduced in Captain America: Civil War) and it was a good story (not boring us with origins just Spidey doing what he does best)….so Sony show that they can do a good Spider-Man movie and create their Spider-Verse!! So… What do they do next?

VENOM.

As soon as this movie was announced I was over the moon. I hated the way he’d been portrayed in Spider-Man 3 so seeing him in his own movie could be a way for Sony to redeem themselves. They announced a dark and gritty movie with Tom Hardy as the lead. Sounds great! Then owly I start to hear more and more and I start to get a little worried…

First off was the trailer…I’m watching the trailer and as soon as I as thinking that it looked really good…until Venom said “Turd in the Wind” at which point I cracked up and I’d not been able to take anything about this movie serious since… I mean come on…really?

Then there’s the news that Spider-Man is not associated with this movie AT ALL. Really? You do realise that the proper story for Venom is that he’s a nemesis of Spider-Man, yes? And Eddie Brock was a rival of Peter Parker? This is a serious shakeup of the origins of Venom, and this doesn’t tend to bode well for comic book movies… When this was done with Hulk and Fant4stic the fans were less than impressed to say the least.

Then shortly before the release the announcement that the movie was PG-13…how in the name of Zarquon do you make a dark and gritty movie if you are aiming for a PG-13 rating? Well….you do not. This movie, if you want to do it right, should be R rated. This is not exactly going well for this movie.

The critics reviews were not exactly favourable (although controversial, rumour has it some eviews were made to sway people to see A Star Is Born which is released same time) with some people saying it was sluggish, and one reviewer even said that it was “This year’s Fant4stic” which is rather off-putting.

So, armed with all this negativity, I headed to my local ODEON with my wife and we settled down to watch the movie.

The movie is about Eddie Brock, a investigative journalist down on his luck. He lost his job after asking the wrong questions to a millionaire businessman (who own the company he worked for), as well as his fiance and his apartment. Brock is a total loser. He then gets told by someone working for that millionaire that he was right to ask those questions and needs to delve further, and against his better judgement goes to investigate…where he comes in contact with an alien symbiote and so he becomes the antihero we all know and love…VENOM. Great, so we now have an introduction to the symbiote who wants to eat people, but Brock is a wuss and wants an easy life, or at least a life where he doesn’t at body parts for snacks!

The movie has not even a sniff of Spider-Man in any way….now OK, this is more based on the Ultimate Venom comics but it still doesn’t feel right. Watching this movie it had some great action, but too much comedy and when all is said and done as much as its an OK action movie I don’t feel it deserves to be a Marvel movie.

The mid-credits scenes was interesting (one of the adverting another movie) but I’m not sure if I want to see a sequel.

Now, I saw this movie in the the cinema on the first week of release, but I’d not had the chance to see it in 3D (I don’t remember seeing any local digital 3D screenings listed, so it wasn’t until recently that I was able to obtain a digital copy of the movie so I could see if it was any good…and to be honest it was bloody horrible. The 3D looks hastiy tacked on and really does nothing for it. Seeing it now I think I understand why the UK Blu-Ray release (Out in February) does not have the 3D version of the film in it now, although I wonder where you can purchase it 3D?

I have seen a nice collector box which is released by HMV which would be brilliant for a Marvel collector….

However, if you are planning to get a copy….I’m sorry to say that it is sold out already according to the website, in fact every version of Venom is actually sold at HMV so it appears to be quite popular for a Turd in the Wind…

Venom is rated 15 and will be out on Blu-Ray and DVD on 4th February,