“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (2021) is the sequel to “Venom” (2018) starring Tom Hardy as the titular symbiote and Eddie Brock who are struggling with their relationship and finding a balance between their needs and desires. Eddie gets a big break when serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) offers him exclusive access, but his success comes at a serious price when Kasady’s proximity to Eddie leads to him becoming the host to a symbiote, Carnage, break out of jail and live up to his symbiote’s name. Will Eddie and Venom be able to mend their differences to stop them?
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” started with a lot of promise but was ultimately disappointing. I saw the first film in the theater, but this time around, I felt as if I needed subtitles and was probably missing a lot of dialogue, which means missing a lot of punchlines, so I am willing to watch it again when the movie is available for home viewing and revise my first impression.
The opening origin story was strong. “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” starts in 1996 at an institution with a clearly disturbed younger Kasady being separated from Frances Barrison, a mutant, who seemed scared and nice, not crazy. This storyline got me excited because I had not expected a mutant to exist in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which includes “The Amazing Spider-Man” (2012) and “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” (2014). Because the latter was a box-office failure, Sony granted the rights’ to Spider-Man to Marvel Studios so he could be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe while Sony developed live-action spin-off films of his nemesis, which includes Venom, Morbius and Kraven the Hunter. 20th Century Fox owns mutants. Frances is a mutant so to quote the President, it was a big fucking deal! And in the film, Frances is also known as Shriek, a black woman whose power is her ear shattering scream. Way to reclaim the stereotype. Because of her persecution for being different, i.e. having powers, the government drives her insane and makes her a more suitable mate for Kasady.
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” reunites the couple twenty-five years later. The least believable part was that after twenty-five years, they just picked up things as if no time passed, but good for them! In contrast to others’ horrific reaction to Kasady/Carnage, Frances loves his transformation. All the women characters seem to enjoy being in the presence of symbiotes, accept the strangeness or consent to possession. Frances is an intriguing character because she is the most powerful being in this universe. She has the power to destroy symbiotes but has no desire to and is invested in Carnage’s safety because of his relationship to Kasady. Kasady is a killer, but he loves better than Eddie, which makes him an interesting character in his own right. For most of the film, he has an uncomplicated relationship with his symbiote and Frances. There is no ambiguity or division in his union to either of them until their polygamous relationship gets disrupted when Carnage realizes that Frances could kill him and considers that power more of a threat than her enthusiastic acceptance of the symbiote being itself.
This relationship dynamic acted as the perfect foil to Eddie, Venom and Anne. Eddie considers Venom problematic because Venom is all id, which Anne enjoys. Eddie is the spoilsport in that relationship and is unable to be a good mate to Venom or Anne. This iteration of Eddie was less fun than I recall from the first movie. He is disheveled, slouchy, and boring. Without being inhibited by human norms/morality, Kasady shows how well a symbiote and a human being can work together, but the spoilsport in their relationship is the asexual symbiote who mirrors traditional toxic masculine norms, which are absent in Kasady’s relationship with Frances. Carnage is an abusive mate who demands that Frances obeys or dies and is physically violent, which neither Frances nor Kassady consent to and creates a division in their otherwise solid relationship.
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” seems to be setting up a confrontation in which everyone will team up against Carnage. While Frances has no issue with Kassady’s homicidal ways or using people as collateral to get what they want, she draws the line at harming innocents, which plants a seed of a redemption story. The filmmakers miss an opportunity to create an elegant, tragic, star-crossed lover ending in which Kassady, in an act of self-sacrifice and true love, signals to Frances that he wants her to destroy him to save herself then give a moment to Frances as she teams up with Venom/Eddie and destroys Carnage.
Instead, the filmmakers never use Frances to her full capacity and disproportionately punishes her in the denouement for taking the wrong side. She is the equivalent of an inanimate object that other people wield like a weapon and never gets an opportunity to choose to use her power. I watched the movie, and I do not even understand the logistics of making her use her power against her will. She talks all the time without shattering ear drums. Robbed of her agency by institutions, the government and the movie, the film sees her as a punchline to a joke (“Ding, dong, the witch is dead”), not a tragic character. Why even bring a mutant into the story if you are going to use her like that? It has no empathy for her.
I really enjoyed “Venom” because we never got a damsel in distress, but in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” there are two, and it felt contrived for one because she was not even in a relationship with the person that the villains were trying to bait. The writers of the story seem to conflict with whomever had the final cut. The final cut has a woman problem. The movie starts with some great details such as the Nurse Hatchet figure, Dr. Camille Pazzo (Sian Webber), but she ends up being fodder for the mill, not a significant supporting character. In another film, she would be the main villain or a side villain, but here she is a footnote, a person to add to the body count. I wonder if there was a better film, but a lot was cut.
I suspect that if I read the comics and did not just watch the movie, I would have enjoyed “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” more because I left with more questions and what felt like dangling plot threads. It is a standard trope to have a serial killer relate to the protagonist and using their shared traits to suggest that under different circumstances, they could trade places or be friends. Other than the symbiote host thing, the film did not make it clear until the denouement, and I do not know enough about Eddie to know if his family abused him too. Also, fun fact: children of symbiotes are apparently more powerful than their parents.
I also hate when sequels do not build on what happened in the origin film. Like “The Avengers” (2012), “Venom” spends its time creating a partnership between Eddie and Venom. Instead of using the sequel to show them becoming a stronger team, like “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015), “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” remixes the first movie and separates them so the trajectory of the story is about arranging a reunion. Do not break up a couple who has been together for a minute and expect me to be invested in their remarriage when there was no marriage. For the second movie, I want to see them cook and separating them only showed how boring and dumb Eddie was without Venom whereas if Venom could find a better host, Venom would have a great life. Did Eddie let himself go when they got together?
I felt as if there were religious themes in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” but I could not quite glean if there was a deeper significance other than being irreverent for fun, which I don’t mind, but funny is better than fun. They were possibly playing with the idea of Carnage as an anti-Christ figure, but it felt unearned. Carnage stretches himself in front of a stainglass window and says the subtitle, which in that context feels like a riff on “Let there be light.”
When I saw the first movie’s end credits, I was not excited so maybe I should have known better than to buy a ticket, but the end credits for “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” are awesome. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be back for more. I’ve learned nothing from this experience. Hint: are we in the MCU? Squeeeeee!!! Worth it.