First reviews of Venom are in, Tom Hardy’s film is lowest rated in Spider-Man series

The first reviews for Venom have been unleashed onto the internet. The Tom Hardy-led Spider-Man spin-off, due for release on Friday, is being criticised for a lack of ambition and a severe lack of Spidey. The film’s score on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes currently stands at a dismal 28%, with less than 30 reviews in.

According to the site’s consensus, “Venom’s first stand-alone movie turns out to be like the comics character in all the wrong ways - chaotic, noisy, and in desperate need of a stronger attachment to Spider-Man.”

This makes Venom the lowest rated film of any Spider-Man series, and a poor start to Sony’s Marvel Universe, a franchise initiated by the studio as an answer to the record-breaking Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sony intends to explore new characters in the series with the possibility of Tom Holland’s Spidey making appearances as part of their deal with Marvel.

“A significant problem in a film full of them is that Eddie comes off as a dope, an eager dufus hardly convincing as a boundary-pushing journo or someone who can out-think a titan of technology,” wrote the Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy. “Venom is a textbook case of a comic-book film that’s unexciting in its ho-hum competence, and even its visual-effects bravura,” Variety’s Owen Gleiberman added.

Only two of the film’s seven reviews by top critics are positive (so far). “This radically different approach will surely be jarring to some, but the fact that this movie could never exist in the same world as Captain America: Civil War despite hailing from the same brand of comics is part of its charm,” wrote IndieWire’s Michael Nordine in one of them.

Venom’s 28% rating puts it on par with fellow superhero film Suicide Squad and only one point ahead of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It falls way short of any Spider-Man film, the highest-rated of which is Spider-Man 2 (93%) and the lowest rated is The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (52%). Holland’s Spider-Man: Homecoming has a 92% score while the average score of the MCU is 84%.

Venom also stars Riz Ahmed and Michelle Williams.

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