“Are you going to eat anybody else?” Experience Tom Hardy in #Venom – now in theaters everywhere. pic.twitter.com/bwS22huJSA
— Venom Movie (@VenomMovie) October 5, 2018
Venom might just be the most relatable comic book character to grace a movie screen. He’s hungry all the time. He understands that Michelle Williams is an American treasure. He thinks Tom Hardy is embarrassing sometimes, but really just wants the best for him. He’s a loser on his home planet, and honestly, life on any other planet seems like a better option, even it means being in a parasitic, toxic relationship.
It’s not clear what precisely we’ve done to deserve this iteration of Venom and the hilariously goofy movie in which he stars, but it’s a mixed blessing worth embracing.
With the success of Spider-Man: Homecoming and Tom Holland’s winsome turn as Peter Parker, coupled with the ever-growing thirst for anything Marvel superhero, Sony has turned to its trove of Spider-Man-related character rights and found Venom, a Spider-Man archenemy that’s as popular as he is fearsome.
In the Marvel comic books, Venom refers to a character created by the bond between a human and an alien Symbiote, which is both a symbiote, an organism that forges a relationship with another organism to reap benefits, and part of an alien race called Symbiotes — I know, it’s complicated. Venom’s first host was Peter Parker himself, but his most iconic host is a disgraced journalist Eddie Brock.
Venom takes some liberties with this history, as the Symbiote in this film has no relation to Spider-Man and has been brought to earth by a visionary space entrepreneur named Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed, cosplaying as a nefarious amalgam of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk). However, luckily for purists and journalists alike, Hardy’s Brock is still a disgraced reporter.
Read full review here.