Venom: Let There Be Carnage Rotten Tomatoes Score Revealed

Is Venom 2 Fresh or Rotten? The Answer Has Been Revealed!

By Kofi Outlaw - September 30, 2021 02:34 pm EDT

Venom: Let There Be Carnage has revealed its official Rotten Tomatoes score. Venom 2 premieres in theaters starting tonight, and a lot of Marvel movie fans have been somewhat trepidatious about the fact that the Venom sequel's critical reviews have been held back so long. Traditionally speaking, a studio holding back reviews until release day is a sign that the studio has little to no confidence in how those reviews are going to go. However, Venom: Let There Be Carnage seems to be the rare exception!

As of writing this, Venom 2 has a 67% Rotten Tomatoes score with 58 reviews having been submitted. That means Let There Be Carnage is officially "Fresh" by Rotten Tomatoes' scale of measurement - even if it's not so fresh as to be worthy of the term "critically approved."

Read below for a sampling of why critics are liking Venom: Let There Be Carnage, despite some of its drawbacks:

"Tom Hardy Shines in an Otherwise Flat Sequel"

In our official ComicBook.com Venom: Let There Be Carnage review, critic Jamie Jirak praises Tom Hardy for once again carrying this franchise across the line, through sheer force of will:

"Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a movie you might enjoy if go in with low expectations. Like the first Venom, there will definitely be people who love and defend the sequel, but we at ComicBook.com are not among them. There's no denying Hardy's magnetism when it comes to playing these roles, and one can only hope there will be more chances for him to act the part in a script worthy of his talent.

Rating: 3 out of 5"

Lesser Movie, Dirtbag Delight

Rolling Stone's K. Austin Collins liked Let There Be Carnage's B-movie feel, and the way the franchise continues to lean into its ironically pulpy style:

"...a dirtbag delight. An actual B-movie, hardly as brainless as it seemed to be but oh-so-very willing and able to seem to be, a piece of throwaway fun that I refuse to throw away... It's a lesser movie than Venom, but one that scratches many of the same itches and then some."

We Want More Venom

LA Times' Robert Daniels thinks that Venom 2 delivers enough for Venom 3 to be an immediate priority in Sony's production pipeline:

"...It's not the promised spectacle that cements "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" as touching, wild entertainment. It's the themes of home, love, and companionship that make Serkis' sequel another reason to want more "Venom" movies, and quickly."

Not-So-Marvelous Sequel

Screen Crush's Matt Singer doesn't think Venom: Let There Be Carnage can achieve that Marvel magic without a key ingredient: Spider-Man:

"Sony managed to pull off the first Venom without Spider-Man, but his absence is really felt this time. The Carnage character works best as a dark mirror image of Spidey; he's all power and zero responsibility. (In most storylines Venom tends to land somewhere in the middle between the two.) Without Spider-Man, Venom: Let There Be Carnage becomes two lunatics trying to out-crazy one another. That gets old pretty quickly."

They Let It Be Carnage

EW's Leah Greenblatt cleverly states that Venom 2 plays just like its title would imply: a bunch of chaotic carnage thrown up on screen:

"[Venom] began as serious Marvel business, supposedly — an extended-universe nod to the comic books, and an establishing cameo in 2007's Spider-Man 3 — though where it landed felt a lot closer to chaotic buddy comedy: a platonic love story between a man and the extraterrestrial insult comic living inside him. None of it made a ton of sense, but it did make more than $850 million at the box office. So now that id has been fully set free in Venom: Let There Be Carnage — a sequel whose title is both a promise and the premise, in its entirety."

Knows What It Is

Bleeding Cool's Kaitlyn Booth says the saving grace of Let There Be Carnage is the refinement of the winking fun the film has with its own wacky premise and characters:

"Venom: Let There Be Carnage knows exactly what it wants to be, shows up, and then ends before it gets overly long. While not a great movie, it's much more tonally consistent than the first one and leans into the things that worked."

Validation Of Bad Choices

That 'more of the same' approach to Venom 2 definitely doesn't work for Cinemablend's Eric Eisenberg:

"Rather than really make an effort to change things, the production clearly saw the previous movie's success as validation of its bad choices, so it regularly succumbs to many of the same issues..."

Need More!

Forbes' Scott Mendelson would've like even more of Venom 2 - cue Marvel fans chanting #ReleaseTheSerkisCut:

It's almost too short, with too little interaction between Venom and the supporting cast, but it delivers plenty of campy violence and metaphorical Hardy & Hardy rom-com hijinks."

Venom: Let There Be Carnage opens in theaters tonight.