Now a trilogy, the "Venom" movies have a distinct tone for Marvel-derived products, neither somber nor self-referential. That's largely due to its star's input.

Do you know what's incredible is that, the visual effects are getting better and better, but one of the challenges in this movie was that we wanted to see Venom during the daylight. Because that's a particularly difficult exposition.

These have been consistently messy, almost willfully bad movies, but Hardy’s performance has been a strangely compelling one-body buddy comedy. It’s one thing to throw a cape on and jump the sky. It’s another to run manically through the desert with an alien voice inside barking,