Despite their critical and financial success, Sony's first Spider-Man spin-off doesn't actually attempt to follow either the tone or the scope of the company's recent collaborations with Marvel. Refreshingly free of aggressive, multi-tiered world building, Ruben Fleischer's Venom instead resembles the kind of superhero feature made back in the late 1990s; those three-act mutants that passed for comic book adaptations before Blade hit and showed everyone how to really do it. Venom recalls a time when comic book branding was less important than whichever star actor you could attract to a project. In that respect, Tom Hardy's casting here reaches for a kind of reassurance and bankability that is almost entirely absent from modern superhero fare.
Venom then is best enjoyed as a throwback, a comic book film that sees its titular property as a jumping off point (one that can be steered towards exciting motorbike stunts) rather than a conceptual millstone. A routine piece of filmmaking then, but one built in ways that we are no longer accustomed to. Hardy, up front, gives the kind of twitchy, physical performance that's closer to a larger-than-life, Schumacher-era Batman villain than the earnest enthusiasm displayed by Tom Holland's web-head. Although likely completely unintentional, it's also interesting to note a few similarities between Venom and Hiroshi Watanbe's 1986 OVA, Guyver: Out of Control. Both revolve around an alien bio-armour that invades every level of a person's experience, wrapping their fracturing body in a black sludge that takes an invasive (and basically sexual) interest in its host. Conflict in Fleischer and Watanabe's features also revolve around a similar kind of corporate clash: a big business expert submits themselves to a colder, crueler creature on their way to a showdown with a discombobulated amateur.