No Spoilers!!!!!!!
Is Venom worth spending your hard earned money to see in the theater? I would have to say no, not really. Venom is a fine movie, but it's not really exceptional and it's pretty light on blockbuster moments that need a huge screen to be enjoyed. If you are really into Venom I guess it would be worth it, but other than that I would say wait until the Blu-ray comes out.
First off this movie suffers from heavy editing for content. If ever a superhero movie should have been rated R it should have been this one. Venom has always been a hyper violent character and engages in some pretty brutal stuff quite regularly. The constant cutting away from the violence and the hour of footage they cut out(which Tom Hardy claims had some of the movies best moments) stick out and become annoying after a while. The movie definitely could have used more Venom and less Eddie Brock. Tom Hardy is a good actor but Brock is written badly and he couldn't really save the character. Riz Ahmed plays generic bad guy( yes they managed to copy a marvel movie right down to the lame villain) who is an Elon Musk parody. Now besides the fact that Elon Musk has become his own parody already, the character falls flat and feels like a non-threat. That was another thing that really felt off about this movie, it was like a knock off Marvel movie. They hit all the beats of the superhero movie but execute just a little worse in almost every category.
I assume Sony made this questionable decision to stay PG-13 with a future crossover with Spider-man in mind. To which I say, why bother? Sony still owns the rights to the other spider people, just have venom fight one of them in your R-rated movie and be done with it. I'm also guessing that the fact Sony pictures often hemorrhages money from the horrible movies they release locked them into going as safe and marvel-esque as possible, and it seems to be paying off. Despite being decidedly mediocre it has been fairly successful, not marvel level but a respectable 378 million so far. Now I'm sure having no serious competition from other big budget action movies in the last two weeks has helped, but it's still making money, which is a good thing when your Sony Pictures.
Maybe the interest shown by audiences will make Sony take the leap and put out the Venom movie people really want to see, or maybe they will try to get in on the money-printing before the inevitable crash of the super-hero genre with more PG-13 Marvel copies. The bottom line here is that Venom was an alright movie, not worth dragging the family out to, and not worth paying the ridiculous prices at your local theater. Wait for this one, you aren't missing much, and maybe we'll get an R-rated director's cut.
