Joel Park
December 9, 2021
An even more disappointing sequel that follows an already disappointing first movie.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage again follows Eddie Brock, who struggles to coexist day to day with Venom, the human-hungry symbiote living in him. He is faced with a new antagonist with the name of Cletus Kasady, a deranged serial killer who also happens to have a symbiote inside him. The premise of the movie is quite similar to the first movie: Eddie and Venom constantly bicker with one another, but makeup and combine forces against an antagonist who threatens to destroy their peace and lives. Though the first movie had some highlights to it which could convince one to watch the film, Let There Be Carnage was an enormous dumpster fire with only reasons as to why one shouldn’t watch it.
Let There Be Carnage had a budget of 110 million US dollars, along with a star-studded cast that consisted of Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Williams, and more. So, what exactly went wrong? Well, the problems lay in the script.
The movie, right from the very beginning, was astonishingly disastrous. The film stresses the hopelessly tedious dynamic between Eddie and Venom, with the overly goofy bent of the duo’s scenes preventing viewers from building up an ounce of interest or enthusiasm for the two characters and their exploits. Other characters, too, fail to make viewers captivated because of how generic and two-dimensional most of them are. The scriptwriter also introduces random plot devices without any explanation at all. For instance, Cletus Kasady refused to speak to anyone but Eddie Brock. And that’s not even the worst. There are so many plot conveniences used to progress the story that it makes you wonder if this was actually a project written by a student whose teacher would give the lowest passing grade out of pity just because they showed up to class and completed the assignment.
Characterization was lacking as well. The only characters that had any character development were Eddie Brock and Venom, and yet the movie relied on the same old tropes without having any emotional impact. The movie also attempted to make Cletus Kasady easier to sympathize with but failed to deliver. The poor attempts at character development had no emotional impact whatsoever and resorted to the same old tropes time and time again.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage seemed promising at first, yet it ultimately builds towards an extremely disappointing climax. The movie undeniably cements its place as one of the worst comic book movie sequels to exist.