10 Movies That Embarrassed Other Movies Released At The Same Time

The first Venom film may have been a colossal box office success, but critics weren't convinced that Tom Hardy's admittedly amusing performance could compensate for the low-effort script and generic, dated superhero movie treatment.

But four months earlier, a considerably more creative and well-executed riff on the Venom concept was released to cinemas, with Leigh Whannell's aptly-titled Upgrade.

Just as Venom focuses on Eddie Brock (Hardy) becoming host to an alien parasite which grants him superhuman powers, Upgrade centers around Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green), a man who is rendered quadriplegic by a botched mugging and implanted with a chip which gives him control of his body back. The rub, though, is that the chip also turns Grey into a brutally efficient killing machine.

The narrative comparisons speak for themselves - as does the uncanny resemblance between Hardy and Marshall-Green - and on a mere $3 million budget compared to Venom's $116 million, Upgrade proved a far more satisfying version of that basic setup.

Furthermore, Whannell got a mind-boggling amount of production value out of his tiny budget, whereas Venom's visuals were frequently garish, even ugly.

Upgrade is therefore proof perfect of what a smart, talented filmmaker can do with minimal resources, compared to the crass excess of Venom's generally lousy superhero shenanigans.