Con’s Score: 4 Slimy smiling beasties
Event Cinema has installed one of two 4D Cinemas in Australia and are using Venom to launch. This isn’t just vibrating seats; this is Sensaround on steroids.
When you first walk in, the dark red seats with footrests makes you feel like you’ve walked into a room full of barbers chairs. I thought the two buttons were for reclining. No, they were ‘Water On/Off’ buttons.
There were anxious executives hanging around making sure people didn’t leave bags under chairs or up against the chair in front. My umbrella would have been turned into a pretzel if I didn’t move it, and my hat was safer on a stand next to me than my head.
There are vibrations running through the chair and sometimes you’ll feel the soundtrack through your butt. The action starts when the action stars. These chairs really rock and roll! They move with every chase and fight scene. You’ll jump with bumps and take every crazy turn. There’s flashing lights, smoke machines, sprays of wind and water and air jets in your seat that fire as bullets whiz past.
Talk about visceral! You feel as if you’ve been on a 100 minute roller coaster. Back sufferers beware, although you might find some of reverbs soothing.
Venom wasn’t made for 3D and hasn’t any real ‘jump-out’ moments. But it has plenty of action scenes and a lot more. It is another Stan Lee inspired Marvel Comic transformed to film, and this one has attracted Tom Hardy. He must have seen something in the conflicted and flawed hero, Eddie Brock, who’s an investigative journalist. He loses his job and his fiancé’s , Anne (Michelle Williams), after he accesses information from her legal files about a megalomaniac scientist-capitalist, Elon Musk… sorry, Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed). He likes the idea of letting some alien slime he picked up from outer space – symbiotes – to infect humans to help us live three times longer… not that anyone has enough super to live that long. This is a guy who doesn’t mind using homeless people as human pigs for experiments. Eddie uncovers the Foundation’s secret, gets infected and turns into Venom, a pretty nasty beastie. Apart from embarrassing Annie and her new boyfriend, they have to save the world because another symbiote wants to invite his friends to Earth.
Tom Hardy really stars in this. He carries his character and dialogues realistically… he’s often talking to himself, and doesn’t look foolish. Ahmed often does. He doesn’t have enough fun with Drake and is the weakest villain I’ve seen for a long while. Michelle Williams is very likeable and her character gets better. Only Hardy seems to get the best of the script, and relishes it. He also does the voice for Venom, which helps with the humour. There are lots of good lines between them which helps me forgive Venom’s shift from nasty to nice. It’s upset a lot of fans.
It’s hard to separate the film from the fun of the experience, and it’s not often you get applause from a Sydney audience. Director Ruben Fleisher has delivered an energetic and fun Marvel movie, which stands, falls and flies on its own two feet, and they both belong to Hardy. If you have the chance to experience 4D cinema, take it. It’ll be the most fun you’ve had in a cinema for a while.
Con Nats – Theatre Now: On the Screen
