Venom 2: 10 Mistakes Sony Must Avoid This Time

Making a movie in any genre is hard enough, but trying to make a movie with a few different overlaps in genre is even trickier.

Horror? With a bit of humour? That can work, but throw in superhero action and a romantic subplot, and, well, the results can be a bit iffy, as we saw. No one walked away from this movie thinking, "I really wish we had gotten more scenes exploring Eddie and Anne's relationship!" And the less said about that kiss, the better. Because therapy is expensive.

Sony's intent was obvious: make a Marvel-esque superhero action movie with Marvel-esque quips, but they also had the daunting task of grounding the story in Cronenbergian body horror, and threw in an underdeveloped romance to boot.

Some of the jokes landed, some fell flat, some of the humour was just plain weird (Hardy's lobster tank bath), the leads lacked chemistry, and audiences deserve something more orignal than a tepid motorbike chase. This isn't the 1980s!

All this added up to a movie with a serious tonal conflict.