Venom (2018)

Most people think so. 84% of audiences gave it a thumbs up, by Google's archived audience score. Critics scored it lower at 33%, but audiences disagreed.

Investigative journalist Eddie Brock attempts a comeback following a scandal, but accidentally becomes the host of Venom, a violent, super powerful alien symbiote. Soon, he must rely on his newfound powers to protect the world from a shadowy organization looking for a symbiote of their own. Wikipedia ↗

Venom is a 2018 American superhero film directed by Ruben Fleischer, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. The film stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, a confrontational investigative journalist in San Francisco who becomes bonded with an alien symbiote named Venom after investigating the Life Foundation, a bioengineering corporation led by Carlton Drake, played by Riz Ahmed. The symbiote grants Eddie superhuman abilities but also threatens to consume him, and the two must negotiate a contentious cohabitation as they battle both the Life Foundation and a more dangerous symbiote called Riot.

Venom was notable for being produced by Sony Pictures without any connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Spider-Man, despite Venom's origins in Marvel Comics being inextricable from the Spider-Man mythology. Tom Hardy's dual performance as both Eddie and the voice of Venom was the film's most distinctive element — Hardy played the relationship between man and symbiote as a bizarre odd-couple comedy, with Venom's alien perspective on human behavior providing darkly humorous commentary. The film received largely negative reviews from critics, who found the plot formulaic and the villain underwritten, but audiences embraced its offbeat tone and Hardy's committed performance.

Venom earned $856 million worldwide, a massive commercial success that surprised industry observers and validated Sony's strategy of building a Spider-Man adjacent universe. The film's R-rated elements were trimmed to achieve a PG-13 rating, though Hardy later expressed a preference for the darker original cut. The success spawned a franchise, with Venom: Let There Be Carnage following in 2021.