Venom is a standalone film spin-off from Sony's Spiderman but not connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in anyway. It only stars Venom though and presents him as an anti-hero. Unfortunately, this doesn't work well at all. The first part of the film, predictably, focuses on Eddie Brock and tries to make you sympathetic to him but he is just feeling the consequences of his own stupid actions. It takes a while before Venom himself appears and the way that he is portrayed in this film incarnation is questionable. Venom is effectively a separate entity, and there is supposed to be funny banter between Venom and Eddie but the film cannot makes it mind on whether to portray Venom as sinister/powerful or funny/sidekick. As a result, the film's tones clashes with itself and makes it hard to take Venom seriously. His motivations are off and hard to believe with the villain being a one-sided boring cliche. The amount of destruction with no consequences done by the characters are laughable and Venom's powers feel like a cop-out. Venom is not a great film and lacks a lot of the fun and charm that you'd want.