Tom Hardy Gets His Teeth Into 'Venom,' Though The Film Lacks Bite

With great power comes great irresponsibility. It's been 29 summers since Prince's "Batdance" heralded the release of Tim Burton's Batman, and longer than that since a comic book screen spin-off featured an original song with lyrics explicitly describing the title character. Even Joss Whedon, a musical-theater guy who made two Avengers movies, and re-wrote and re-shot a hefty chunk of last year's Justice League, failed to supply this very basic, spins-a-web, any-size, catches-thieves-just-like-flies need in his three at-bats.

So thank goodness for director Ruben Fleischer's limp-but-not-enervatingly-awful horror comedy built around a Spider-Man villain last seen in Sam Raimi's now memory-holed Peter Parker — who in the comics of the mid-'80s, many reboots ago, was the ravenous alien symbiote's first human host — doesn't rate so much as a name-check this time, though Venom — the CGI creature, not the movie — still looks like a mylar Spider-Man balloon with filthy razor teeth and Gene Simmons' tongue. Frankly, s disinterest in saying whyso, or in exposition generally, is a selling point at this late-stage moment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Q: Say, is this Sony Pictures In Association With Marvel release part of the MCU? A: Shut up!