The first Venom tried being a buddy cop movie hiding behind a horror movie. Largely, the horror elements did not work very well in the first Venom as many of the horror elements and shock moments were largely underserved by its PG-13 rating, held back by a lack of faith from the studio that Venom would perform well as a rated-R movie. Where the movie failed in its middling alien invasion plot empowered by a less than intriguing business tycoon, it did succeed in building a surprisingly engaging chemistry between Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and the CGI created Venom. As the two develop their symbiotic relationship in the first movie, they showed signs of promise that there was more gold to be found between the two characters in future outings. Following up on the faults and successes of the first movie, Venom 2 seeks to hide its true genre beneath the surface of the genre they advertise, much like Venom hides within Eddie.
Spoilers ahead.
Venom 2 tries to be a superhero movie with some of the most by the numbers plot and pacing they could possibly deliver. Eddie follows the typical Hero’s Journey patterns by actively rejecting the call to adventure to be a superhero, despite the fact that he actively saved the world from alien invasion in the last movie. After riding high on their successes, Eddie and Venom have a trifling fight over boundaries and personal space that lead to them breaking up, much like many new couples who find themselves on the other end of the honeymoon phase. Detective Mulligan, who is just a loose thread connecting the plot to Cletus Kasady’s lover, exists only to narrate what the audience is thinking so that everyone knows exactly where the threat level is during each act of the movie. The movie has to recruit Eddie’s love interest Anne in order to get him out of his stupor, only for her to get captured by the villains to add more motivation for our hero to save the day. Possibly the most damaging trope comes the basic theme of the final fight is unable to overcome the evil copy trope that many superhero villains are, all the way down to a girl tearing apart our villainous duo while our heroic combo come together to save their girl. These various tropes commonly found throughout superhero movies grounds the movie, creating a ceiling to the potential of these characters and the overall story. However, when Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage leans on the horror tropes at its roots, this time the movie delivers on its promises with a new combination of tropes that feels refreshing in the oversaturated superhero movie world.
Horror movies commonly implement the trope where the movie holds off on revealing the monster to the audience until the final act of the movie, building up the suspense and terror of the creature terrifying the unlikely heroes of the movie. Venom 2 utilizes a different version of this trope, by keeping Eddie and Venom from fighting Carnage until the very end of the movie, Venom losing the will to fight at the mere sight of the superior symbiote. While Eddie and Venom dealt with their relationship problems throughout the movie, the audience watched as the horrific visage of Carnage emerged from the darkness, with Cletus Kasady flexing his new powers merged with the symbiote by mercilessly slaughtering the people who had come to watch his execution. This pacing successfully builds up anticipation for the fated clash between good and evil in a way that feels very refreshing in the current era of superhero movies where the heroes and villains clash several times throughout the course of the movie. Just look at Avengers: Infinity War where Thanos clashes with different combinations of superheroes four times, spanning the entire movie. Separating these characters helps the viewer suspend their sense of disbelief of who will win in the clash of titans, leaving the question unanswered until the very end of the climactic fight. Many directors will be tempted to have their villains and heroes fight several time throughout movie, much like a child playing with his toys, however they can really unlock the potential of their story by crafting their structure in more unique ways by pulling from tropes and ideas that exist outside of the genre of the world they are working in.
Despite disparaging many of the tired tropes that exist in the movie, Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage still triumphs by focusing on developing its characters, building understanding for these outcasts in a way that society could understand. Woody Harrelson is able to tightrope between crazy, unredeemable serial killer and sympathetic, misunderstood bereave of a long lost love. While the audience can understand how Cletus Kasady is a victim of his environment, his obsession with taking out his pain and anger on the world shows that Venom is quite justified in killing him off in the end. Naomie Harris plays Shriek in equally endearing ways, having gone crazy in her years in captivity away from her love, a victim of a system that sought to isolate her instead of helping her. The flaws in Shriek’s character have nothing to do with Harris, and all to do with the script’s closing moments for her character, throwing in an unearned potential redemption moment as her character is unwilling to let Carnage kill Anne, despite the fact that she had just killed Detective Mulligan a scene earlier. This plot beat is only thrown in to add extra motivation for Cletus and Carnage’s splitting goals and eventual defeat, a moment that would have been better played if Carnage had lashed out at Shriek for using her powers again, which is deadly to the symbiote, a thematic moment to better close off her character arc. Our titular heroes, both played by Tom Hardy in the typical weird dedication to the point of insanity that he always brings to his characters, are still superheroes’ best couple as Eddie and Venom solidify their relationship during the “Red Wedding” and close out the movie by going on a honeymoon very far away from the consequences of this movie.