A So-Bad-It’s-Good Movie Ruined by a Boring Superhero Plot

The first , released in 2018, was a superhero tale with a strange twist. On its face, it told yet another origin story, explaining how the down-on-his-luck journalist Eddie Brock (played by Tom Hardy) melded bodies with an alien to become the goopy Venom. But the film’s most interesting aspect was not the comic-book action; it was the oddball rom-com energy between Eddie and his symbiotic costume—along with the genuine intensity of Hardy’s performance. The actor one of that film’s, in which Eddie plops into a lobster tank and starts munching on the inhabitants.