 As the Sony-verse continued to unfold with its whole "Not-Sinister-Six" plan, I left 'Carnage' here with the same thoughts I had about its predecessor. The characters may not have been developed perfectly, but they looked great, were well-cast, and it's an easy movie to have fun with. Also, just like 'Venom,' while this didn't necessarily do well critically, the fans make it clear that it's not so bad, as long as you can let go of reality a bit. And you should for a character like Venom.
This one branches nicely off of 'Venom' and its stinger scene, in which we see Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) head into San Quentin State Prison to interview one Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson). And if you've ever been any sort of fan of Venom, you know exactly who that is. While the MCU is the "King of Stingers," I can at least say there wasn't any confusion about what this was meant to lead to. Kasady simply leaves us with the promise of "Carnage" whenever he manages to get out, and a lot of us looked forward to the next chapter. We open here back in 1996, where we meet a young Kasady (Jack Bandeira), communicating back and forth through holding cells with his love interest, Frances Barrison, AKA "Shriek" (Naomie Harris), who is more or less revealed to be a mutant, in so many words, to keep it nice and legal. She is taken from St. Estes Home for Unwanted Children, where she fell in love with Cletus, and forced to be separated and taken to the Ravencroft Institute, where she and her mutant abilities will be more secure. This leaves Cletus stewing for several years. In the present, Det. Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham) contacts Brock (who's still bonded with Venom, but keeping it on the down-low), telling him that Kasady wants an interview. Hesitantly, Brock agrees, and during their one-on-one, a little piece of Venom is taken from Brock, eventually bonds with Kasady, and Carnage is created. Their bond is almost perfect, and their motivation goes from prison-break and break-out Shriek, to much more sinister things, and it's up to Venom to put a stop to it. Meanwhile, there's a secondary plot involving Eddie's ex-fiancée, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) and her engagement to Dr. Dan Lewis (Reid Scott). This is where I find the film kinda tries on the 'Spider-Man 2' concept on for size; his love interest likes someone else, lacks feelings for him, and it all boils down to his superhero life interfering with his normal one. It works out here, but in some ways, does feel like a copy. That said, I still mean it when I say I think this one is slightly more fun than its predecessor. For as much as I love the casting of Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, I think it's safe to say that Woody Harrelson really steals the show here as Cletus Kasady. The man does "psycho" very well, and there's a real intimidation to his look at times. You can tell he's having a ton of fun with the role, and I love how much his character embraces the chaos that is Carnage, constantly letting his Symbiote take the wheel. On the flipside, they brought out the more fun aspects of Venom, which may have been a risk, but I remember "fun" Venom from the original Playstation game, so I embraced it pretty easily. When it comes to the Sony-verse movies, it's clear that 'Venom' is their bread and butter, while 'Morbius' and 'Madam Web' failed miserably. The 'Venom' movies may not have been perfect, but at least one could find some fun in them. The Symbiotes here, at least look good and don't need to peel back their face to show their inner celebrity every five seconds (Topher!), making them feel more familiar. For me, the 'Venom' movies are just a friendly reminder that sometimes the superhero genre just doesn't need to be taken seriously, as long as a good time is had. 3/5
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 The Sony-verse (as far as Spider-Man-related movies go) is a very hit-or-miss situation altogether. While the animated 'Spider-Verse' movies are entertaining, artistic, clever takes on stories about Miles Morales, giving Sony its own Spider-Man after Disney/Marvel took Peter Parker away. That's a whole situation I wish the hell I knew why Sony wasn't capitalizing on, but they decided to go a different route instead; the frankly overall disappointing route of trying to make some kind of a fake-ass Sinister Six for themselves.
For my money, the only half decent live-action movies that exist in the Sony-verse are the Venom films, starting with this new, but not bad take on the character. By the time this came out, a lot of us went with the idea that it couldn't possibly be worse than 'Spider-Man 3's take on the character. In the end, it pretty much completely divided audiences. Critically, these didn't do so hot, but fans (and myself) were at least able to cut it a little slack, because, hell, the character was just done really well. When a space mission that includes the quick name-drop of "Jameson" (Chris O'Hara) goes wrong, and their ship crash-lands on Earth, three of four "Symbiotes" (an alien organism that attempts to bond with a host) are quickly collected by Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), who understands that successfully bonding with these things could be a next step towards our human evolution, allowing us to explore space, and potentially finds more planets to inhabit. However, a fourth Symbiote (Venom) manages to escape the wreckage. Meanwhile, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) enters the scene to report on Drake, and give him a hard time with some top secret files. As a result, Brock loses everything, including His job, and his fiance, Anne (Michelle Williams), who happened to work for Drake's company. However, Dr. Dora Skirth (Jenny Slate), who works for Drake and realizes what he's doing with these Symbiotes, secretly invites Brock back to the lab to expose Drake's experiments. This is where the Venom Symbiote finds and bonds with Brock. It's revealed that the Symbiotes' general purpose (at least for this movie) is to invade planets, possess and devour their inhabitants, and move on. If Eddie helps Venom with this, he may just be spared. However, the pair soon find themselves in over their heads when the aforementioned fourth, escaped Symbiote (Riot) finds his host, ready to continue their alien goals, while Venom ends up finding a bit more of a human/righteous side to himself while bonded with Brock, and helps Eddie become the film's hero. The whole Venom storyline has more or less fallen by the wayside as far as trying to get a live-action version of it to be everything we want it to be. 'Spider-Man 3' screwed it up, and this storyline is just very different, with its own ideas and concepts. I was never too mad at it though, considering what was done with 'Spider-Man: Homecoming,' being an MCU original take on a much more popular character, and enjoying that just fine. Why should this have been any different for me? In the end, I can fully admit that I find this movie to be a lot of fun, and although the story isn't "correct," the character (I find) is done well. This is definitely not everyone's Venom, and I think it's safe to say that aside from the original comic book take on things, one should definitely refer to the 1994 animated series for the original story. That said, if you're new to the character, I don't think this is a bad place to start. While these films remain the best part of the Sony-verse, however, they're far from perfect, or even that wonderful. But if you're looking for a bit of a roller coaster ride, and are open to a few changes here and there, this is just fine for what it is. 3/5  At the end of 2016's 'Deadpool', we got our typical-by-now post-credit sequence, involving Deadpool doing a take on the post-credit scene to 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off', and ultimately teasing us that the film already had a sequel in the works with the casting of famed badass, and never-before-used Cable in mind. We were ready for it, and the rumour mill started up on who was gonna play Cable - most famously, Brad Pitt, but we'll come back to him in a bit. It was one of the more discussed topics among friends until they cast Thanos, himself, Josh Brolin.
I think everything worked out for the best in the end, but instead of talking about casting, maybe I should just get into the film itself. Riding on the coattails of the ultra-successful, R-rated 'Logan', this one actually opens with a dose of tragedy, and another great opening sequence with humorous credits, this time parodying the 'Bond' movies. Even though this all happens right at the beginning, and the film is on the older side at this point, I'm still not gonna say exactly what happens, but it does lead to Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) entering a deep depression, which makes him search for a greater purpose. Soon enough, Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic (Brianna Hildebrand) come back into Wade's life, in another attempt to recruit him to the X-Men. Wade reluctantly agrees, and is soon given his first mission; to try to help a destructive young mutant by the name of Firefist (Julian Dennison) before things go wrong. That particular "wrong" involves killing the headmaster of his orphanage (Eddie Marsan) who want to cure him, and consider his mutant abilities a sin. That murder will ultimately direct him down a dark path of destruction. We learn of this destruction through the aforementioned Cable, who travels from the future to "present day" (2018) to get to Firefist early, and prevent him from eventually growing up and slaughtering Cable's family. The kid then becomes Deadpool's go-to source for having a change of heart and ultimately doing the right thing by not only preventing his 'T2'-like murder, but also trying to set him on the right path. Although the jokes and gags here are plenty, this one is still quite a bit darker than the first, and a better glimpse into Wade's more serious side (small though that side may be). I might suggest that this chapter of the 'Deadpool' series might have been better for the time, especially with the introduction of 'X-Force', which was the original direction these films were heading. We were introduced to characters like Domino (Zazie Beetz), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgård), Bedlam (Terry Crews), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Vanisher (remember when I mentioned Brad Pitt?) and of course, Peter (Rob Delaney). I may argue that things really did turn out for the best in the end, when these films took a different direction with 'Deadpool & Wolverine', but still, an 'X-Force' movie lead by Deadpool could have been a lot of fun! So this now kind of suffers as a bit of a hinge movie with different expectations by the end of it, but I will say that it's not something in plain sight. It's not like the movie left us with a major cliff-hanger for the upcoming 'X-Force' movie. Instead, we actually get a time-travel sequence that lends itself more to the direction they went with the series. One might call it a happy accident, but one might also just say that the concept of time travel opens too many easy doors. But that's the nice thing about Deadpool - either way you slice it, we're gonna have fun with it. It's hard for me to say whether I like this one of the first one better, but I do feel like the first had more going for it as a film the fans were clamouring for. That's not to say this wasn't effective, it's just that we've seen what DP can do at this point. On top of that, this now carries that "What if?" scenario involving 'X-Force' that we never got to see. But there's still enough here in fourth wall-breaking, jokes, gags, cameos and all-around action that it's a super solid and super worthy sequel to its predecessor. Just thank god 'Deadpool & Wolverine' picked up some of the missing pieces! 5/5  Going back to 2016, it just took one thing for us geeks to hear before we were foaming at the mouth like wild dogs in anticipation for this movie. And that was the R-rating! All we could do was imagine all the possibilities, and it delivered on all fronts. Fourth-wall breaking aplenty, sure, but also sex, violence, foul language, suggestive moments - everything that makes Deadpool awesome was there. We needed things set right after that Baraka-looking Deadpool given to us in 'Origins: Wolverine', and we GOT IT!
Cutting right to the chase, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) works as a mercenary for hire. After he meets the love of his life, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), life is looking better than ever, however, he becomes riddled with El Cancer, and soon desperate situations call for desperate measures. He agrees to an offer that he is told will not only cure his cancer, but give him the abilities of a superhero. Instead, Wade is subject to a torturous nightmare which eventually gives him the ability to heal from basically everything, and the ordeal leaves him deformed. This was all done by the hands of a dude who likes to call himself Ajax (Ed Skrein), and his assistant, Angel Dust (Gina Carano), and most of the film is centred on Wade's revenge against the pair for turning him into a freak. Armed with a killer sense of humour, a rapid healing factor, blades and bullets, nothing can stop him! Nothing short of Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), that is. In my opinion, the best way to look at it is that they're basically representing a PG-13 rating telling an R-rating what it should be doing while the R-rating doesn't really care. We've become accustomed to superhero movies thinking a bit more outside of the box by now, but just think about it being early 2016 at this point. The most well-regarded superhero movie at the time was probably still 'The Avengers', with 'Civil War' right around the corner, meaning Spidey wasn't even a part of the MCU yet. For the time, between the R-rating, fan service, fourth wall-breaking and Ryan Reynolds being awesome for helping to bring it all together, this was one of the best superhero movies of all time. Arguably, it still is. A couple more characters we are introduced to throughout the movie also help form what becomes Wade's inner circle; eventually what he calls his family. There's the lovable cab driver, Dopinder (Karan Soni), his bartender and close friend, Weasel (T.J. Miller), and his senior, foul-mouthed roommate, Blind Al (Leslie Uggams). While none of them are deeply essential to the plot, all of their back and forth banter with Wade/Deadpool make for some of the funniest moments in the film. Because the studio actually wised up and let the crew do what they wanted with the movie, its one that still completely holds up, and I'd argue set the bar just a little higher for things to come - namely a new batch of 20th Century Fox superhero titles with a darker tone to them. They were even playing with genres for a bit when you get right down to it. If this was a comedy, 'Logan' was a western, and 'New Mutants' was set to be a horror, originally slated to air in April of 2018, before 'Deadpool 2'. It would have been interesting to see where that all could have gone, but here and now, I'm kinda glad it didn't completely work out. Still, however, I can't help but give this film all the kudos it deserves for really, truly listening to its audience, and providing us with a winning product that didn't really seem to get on anyone's nerves with any kind of predictability, or cliched moments. The plot is incredibly basic for a typical superhero movie, sure, but I almost feels like that adds to the experience, as Wade is just cracking fourth-wall jokes throughout. It works for what it needs to be, and its a superhero movie everyone can enjoy, if only because its just so damn fun! 5/5 |
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