Okay, it’s Venom, for which/whom I felt sorry and I saw. Sony still owning Spiderman and trying to make superhero movies is not unlike poor DC trying to make movies of any kind. Then when Mr. Tom Hardy publicly criticized the cut of the weird 40 minutes, I knew that I was going to see it. And, then, like a prophecy in a film, I did see it.

But it was also an extremely rare opportunity to see a VO at the CGR La Mézière, which is a funny little spot north of Rennes where even malls fear to tread. They do sell, like Gaumont used to, the wonderful Bueno cone, and Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter. Gaumont has banned those flavors for being good. Sadly, this will be the last VO until, I have no idea, the Avengers/Twilight crossover.

Don’t steal that idea, or make that film.

Speaking of, I saw the new trailer for Harry Potter prequel, and got to see Johnny Depp dubbed in French. I immediately hit upon how much better a sequel would be, one that took place in earth’s (preferably dystopian) future, where magic could be discovered and then fought by technology. You know everything that’s going to happen in prequels, and nothing in sequels. It’s storytelling, which I’m aware is confusing.

That being said, The Predator did suck. So, I’ll be quiet now.

and utterly by myself. I would have asked them to turn off the 3D and turn on the LightVibes™. But I got scared.

Also got to see the new Assassin’s Creed trailer (no, not for the movie, for the video game). It is a terrifying re-make of the opening to Trainspotting, replete with the imminently buyable ‘Lust for Life’ track. Consuming is being sold as anti-consumption. Which I’m all for, since this type of consumption (video games) involve a lot of sitting around.

Which means you’re not consuming, Scott. Duh.

Then came the terrible trailer for Bohemian Rhapsody, which convinced me to see it. Nothing new there, but this time it’s because of the extremely gimmicky LightVibes, lights on the side of the theater that flash in sync with the movie. It’s the Scott motivational equivalent of having an actor complain that the best 40 minutes of the film have been cut.

Right, then there was a movie.

Venom wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought, and made me sad that it couldn’t go farther with such a basic premise. There’s a bad guy inside you that likes to eat heads. The girlfriend doesn’t complain about him saving earth, but instead helps and has a few zingers herself. What’s not to like?

Well, it definitely needed to be ‘R’. Not for the violence, but for the idea. Eating heads would be funnier as a slightly worse bad guy. Bloodless decapitation via genetically grown axe-arms makes the whole world blind. Or able to see, cause their eyes aren’t covered in 3D blood. Got a little lost there in the metaphor, but I liked the idea of 3D blood.

To save myself, glasses that convert 3D to 2D. Probably why I didn’t hate it as much as I should have.

The first twenty minutes are the best demonstration of the Behind the Backstory rule I’ve seen in a while. It’s not only exposition that in no way dramatic, and could be, and then was, better served in single lines of dialog.

No, it’s that the prologue actually contradicts the the heart of the character – that he’s a loser. The loser character is a tough sell with Mr. Hardy, but he nails the Venom voice, and that’s why they hired him, so shut up. He’s given up, and it works only if we pretend if we haven’t seen him at the top of the world, Ma/Rose.

Then a bunch of stuff happens, some not totally terrible. So, watch it, laugh a few times, fill in the blanks where the dialog is lacking, be disappointed that it’s another lazy movie about a bad guy trying to control the world’s population problem (‘I know. We’ll take a problem that’s everyone’s fault, and make it the cause of one person!’). And stay for the rap song at the end. They do as good a job with the word ‘venom’ as MILF did with ‘milf’ in their hip-hop song at the end.

Now you tell me. MILF had a hip-hop song.

Now you tell me. There was a movie called MILF.