Is Venom as bad as Critics Say?

Venom (2018) (Sony Pictures)
Black Panther Spider-Man.. I mean.. Venom, released October 5th, 2018 to a slaughter of critic scores in the cine-plex. At the time of this writing, Venom sits at a 32% on Rotten Tomatoes which makes it officially a certified load of crap, but does that translate across all boards? Could viewers disagree with critics? Rhetorical; the fact of the matter is that fans and the average viewer alike agree that Venom is a smash hit and here are my reasons for the divide:

A Story Lost to Madness (And Funniness?)
Venom is absurd (the character and the film) but that’s not a bad thing! Quite frankly, the film starts at a bad pace and really doesn’t pick up until the 2nd act with the introduction of Venom himself. The majority of major blockbuster films are now suffering from an interesting concept of “Marvel-it-up,” which translates to “make all movies funny.” What happens when you try to make more things funny? Critics get tired of the same-old, but the average movie goer who takes a trip to the movies once a month doesn’t experience the same fatigue of “Marvel-itis” (yes I made my own word, sue-itis me).

What Makes this Redeemable?
Tom Hardy, despite some of his questionable roles (I’m looking at you Bane in Batman: The Dark Knight Rises), is quite the extraordinary actor and certainly gets to flex his acting chops in Venom as both his roles as Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote, which he provides voice over work for. The bread and butter of this film is churned through the character interactions between Brock and Venom

Where did Sony Stumble?
Sony (the movie studio) has a bad habit of showing too much in their movie
trailers and some could make an interesting case for this film’s trailers ruining all of the best action sequences in the film itself. The surprise is that, although it is an interested marketing strategy, it shouldn’t be a pejorative to movie goers. It isn’t and shouldn’t be the “end-all, be-all” for a film to have a questionable trailer production team, but yet here we sit talking about it’s importance (so… hint-hint Sony…).

Isn’t Venom a Bad Guy?
The Anti-Hero isn’t that much of a new frontier. It was done recently by DC and the like (à la Suicide Squad, Spawn, DeadPool, Wolverine, Ghost-Rider…), but where does Venom sit on the hero-scale spectrum? Without getting too much into spoiler territory, Venom becomes a person (symbiote) whom the audience can get behind. In their own individual spin-off movies, of course they’ll be the hero to their story!

Should you See it or Not? Who Do I Believe?
No one! Believe no one! I typically love to get my media reviews from famous YouTubers such as “Beyond the Trailer,” and “Angry Joe,” (all of whom I highly recommend, both for entertainment and astute critical analysis values, which are credited to different demographics) but I’ve even disagreed with their views on different products of media. The best way to form your own opinion is to form it yourself (and listen to me of course).

What are your thoughts on the Venom (2018) movie? Did it surpass your expectations?

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Wii Lose?

By: Josue “Josh” Alvarez Mapp (a.k.a. DJ Mappquest)

So earlier this week, Nintendo announced its follow to arguably one of the best casual gaming systems ever – the Nintendo Wii.  The Wii was one of the champs that dug deep and attracted people to gaming who in most normal worlds (PC gaming, PS3, Microsoft X-Box 360, etc.) would never have come about to.  And for roughly two years, Nintendo reigned as king of the casual gamers and otherwise unexploited market of possible gaming consumers.  Eventually Sony and Microsoft wanted a cut and made their own peripherals to go along with their systems.  Personally, I believe Nintendo still had the upper hand because that is what it was designed for, plus it was cheaper.

E3: The Big Three Winners and Losers

The Big three have have drawn their battle lines for the rest of the year with three press conferences to open up E3 2011.

Microsoft kicked us off with a presser full of new Kinect announcements…Yay. That is all we need more ways to use a $200 microphone to watch netflix. There was also plenty of useless garbage about why I should watch more TV on my Xbox. Some of the games looked cool and hey hard to lose at E3 when you announce a pair of Halo games. I have to admit I am a little disappointed in Microsoft this year they have made a big splash in previous e3s but this one just felt like they kinda phoned it in and then went “BUT WE HAVE KINECT STUFF, LOOK AT US WE LIKE NON-GAMERS!”

Sony really made the first big waves showing off their new portable the “PSvita”. Which is essentially a very upgraded and featured PSP. Sony also featured alot of cool footage of the new Uncharted and some playstation move shovelware. Demoing handhelds is just awkward at these types of things, there just isn’t a cool way to do an over the shoulder shot of a guy playing on a handheld. I do give Sony credit for going right at the elephant in the room (the hackening).

Nintendo came out guns blazing announcing 5 new titles for the 3ds and most importantly showing off their new console the WiiU. The WiiU appears to be an xbox360 that is controlled by a wii classic controller with an iPad shoved into the center of it. Like all new tech jumps I believe this will be exactly as good as the 3rd party developers allow it to be. If Nintendo continues their policy of “let anyone make any crap with 1 motion control feature and we will give it a seal”, then this is just another pointless gimmick. If they actually care about the games that come out it could do really well. I am also concerned about pricing, it would seem there is a lot of R&D on this project and more horsepower typically comes with a higher price tag. I have heard a lot of comments about how low-res it still looked. It is worth noting that Nintendo’s art style doesn’t really take advantage of high end graphics it is the 3rd party developers that will benefit.

So who is the winner? looking at early reactions Nintendo’s new console would give them the nod. Although I would not say anyone dominated this year like Microsoft did in 2008 (Metal Gear, Netflix)

and the loser? well this is a no brainer