When the
Amazing Spider-man 2 was filmed, it was intended as a springboard for spin-off
properties, in theory not a bad idea but it was handled so clumsily it brought
down the reception of the whole film. The Amazing Spider-man 2 made decent
money, but not enough for Sony executives to be satisfied, so they reached a
deal with Marvel to bring a new version of the web-head into the MCU.
But the idea
of spin-offs wasn’t dropped entirely, they were just distanced from any
spider-man legacy. So, we are back to our original question: How do you do a
venom origin without spider-man?
Grappling
with the answer to this question is Jeff Pinker, who co-wrote the Amazing
Spider-man 2, Dark Tower and the modern Jumanji movies, Scott Rosenberg, who
did an uncredited revision of the first Raimi Spider-man movie, and also the
modern Jumanji films (also Kangaroo Jack), and Kelly Marcel, who co-wrote
saving Mr Banks and unfortunately did the screenplay for the original 50 Shades
of Grey movie. I will never dignify those movies with reviews, so never ask. So
mixed bag there then. Directing the film is Ruben Fleischer of the Zombieland
films. Wikipedia says he’s directing Uncharted but with the way that project’s
going through directors I’m sure if it hasn’t already, it will have changed in
the 2 months between me writing this review and it being published.
The film had
a budget of $116m and surpassed expectations, making $856m, more than half of
the live action Spider-man films made, though less than the more recent MCU
outings. It certainly created a divide between audiences and critics, with
critics giving it a 29% Rotten Tomatoes rating with an average 4.42/10 score
and audiences giving it an 80% rating with an average 4.02/5 score. So, where
do I stand? let’s take a look…
