I was raised watching Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, so I was down for a campy superhero movie about Venom. Tom Hardy is a great actor, Marvel had been on a mostly good streak, but when this came out I never saw it. After hearing mixed reviews, I finally watched this and was fairly disappointed.

The good: Tom Hardy is a good actor, some of the interactions between him and Venom are pretty fun.

Honestly, that's about all I can say for this movie. Tom Hardy is a good actor, but a lot of his performance in this movie feels strange: watch this pretending that he's drunk and it totally fits with the way he delivers lines and moves. The side characters are very forgettable, and the villain even more-so. Ultimately, all of this would have been fine if once we finally met Venom, he had the right chemistry with Eddie Brock and the movie started really picking up speed. Instead, their relationship did not work for me, feeling random and not having the connection or humor that they needed. CGI not amazing at some point. The movie felt like it wants you to take it seriously, but then the main action scene has the Elon Musk villain deploying exploding drones at Eddie Brock in the middle of a random street, blowing up random cars and, again, shooting drones at him.

I would have enjoyed this movie a lot more if it brought Venom in sooner and really nailed their relationship. But because of the movie we got, I doubt I will ever want to watch this again and I don't know how I would even feel about seeing Venom in the MCU. I wish I could have just enjoyed this movie like a lot of people did.