Venom on screen: Sony's saga with Tom Hardy (full analysis)

There are gambles nobody sees coming. Back in 2018, handing an entire film to the black symbiote of Spider-Man, with no Spider-Man on screen, looked like heresy to a lot of fans. Six years on, the Venom saga carried by Tom Hardy has taken more than $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office and closed on a complete, coherent and surprisingly moving trilogy. Three films, an actor utterly possessed by the part, an unlikely couple made up of a washed-up journalist and an alien creature hungry for brains: here is the full analysis of the Venom saga on screen, from its origins to its final bow.

This article deliberately focuses on the Sony films with Tom Hardy. If you're after the character's roots in the comics instead, his link with Peter Parker and his birth in 1988, you'll find it all in our feature on the complete history of the black symbiote. Here, we're talking cinema, box office, casting and direction.

Sony's Spider-Man Universe: where does this saga come from?

To understand why Venom got his own films without ever crossing paths with Spider-Man, you have to go back to a question of rights. Since 1998, Sony Pictures has held the film rights to Spider-Man and to his vast gallery of supporting characters: the villains, the allies, and above all the symbiotes. That complicated split of the rights, which we set out in our article on who really controls Spider-Man between Marvel, Disney and Sony, explains everything. Sony could exploit Venom, but could not have him appear alongside the Peter Parker of the MCU, whose control is shared with Marvel Studios.

Out of that constraint came the Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU), a parallel franchise built around the antiheroes and villains of the arachnid universe. Venom was its cornerstone, the founding success that gave Sony the nerve to launch Morbius in 2022, then Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter in 2024. None of those satellites came close to Venom's popularity, which underlines just how far the chemistry between Tom Hardy and his creature bordered on a commercial miracle.

Venom (2018): the unlikely birth of a blockbuster

Released on 5 October 2018 and directed by Ruben Fleischer, the first Venom was savaged by critics and adored by audiences. A rare gulf that sums the thing up perfectly: a wobbly film, often clumsy in its writing, but carried by an infectious energy and a wholly uninhibited lead performance. On a budget of roughly $100 million, it took more than $850 million worldwide, a tidal wave that instantly justified a sequel.

Eddie Brock, the Life Foundation and Riot

The plot follows Eddie Brock, an investigative journalist in San Francisco, whose career and relationship with Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) collapse after a botched investigation into the Life Foundation. That company, run by billionaire Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), is carrying out secret experiments on alien symbiotes brought back from a comet. Breaking into the laboratory to prove what is going on, Eddie accidentally bonds with one of them: Venom.

The film's antagonist is Riot, a brutal silver symbiote who bonds with Carlton Drake in order to bring his whole species to Earth. The character draws straight from the lore of the Life Foundation symbiotes, a family of creatures we explore in detail in our portrait of Riot in the comics. The climax, a chaotic showdown on a rocket at lift-off, ends with the deaths of Riot and Drake, while Venom chooses Earth — and Eddie — as his new home.

A relationship comedy dressed up as an action film

What gives this first instalment its lasting charm is its true nature: a strange romantic comedy between a man and the monster living in his head. Tom Hardy literally plays both parts, lending his cavernous voice to Venom, and turns their inner dialogue into a gleefully split-personality acting turn. The restaurant scene where Eddie dives into a lobster tank, or the one where Venom lectures him like a toxic flatmate, created a double act the sequels only amplified. That fused, turbulent relationship sits at the heart of the symbiote myth, a theme we unpick in our analysis of the dark, legendary relationship between Spider-Man and the symbiote.

The post-credits scene changes everything: Eddie visits a wild-eyed serial killer in prison, Cletus Kasady, played by Woody Harrelson under an improbable red wig. His chilling promise — when he gets out, and he will get out, there will be carnage — was already trailing the sequel and the saga's most eagerly awaited villain.

That popular success was also built outside cinemas. The title track Venom, written by Eminem, was a streaming hit, while fans turned the duo's lines into viral memes. That cultural phenomenon proved something essential to Sony: the character did not need Spider-Man to exist in his own right. Where critics saw a dated, incoherent film, a whole generation of viewers saw a funny, unpredictable and deeply endearing antihero, exactly the sort of figure you want to see again film after film.

BECOME THE SYMBIOTE

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Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021): red against black

Released on 1 October 2021 in the United States, this second instalment marks a turning point. Sony handed directing duties to Andy Serkis, the legendary motion-capture actor (Gollum, Caesar in Planet of the Apes), who understands better than anyone the mechanics of a digital character talking to a human. The result is shorter, brisker and far more comfortable with its horror-comedy tone. Despite arriving in the middle of the post-pandemic recovery, the film passed $500 million at the worldwide box office.

Cletus Kasady and Carnage, the scarlet terror

The big addition to this film is Carnage. When Cletus Kasady bites Eddie during a prison interview, he ingests a trace of the symbiote and gives birth to a blood-red creature, more powerful and infinitely more unstable than Venom. Woody Harrelson plays a killer driven by a love-struck, destructive madness, and that fractured psychology sits at the centre of the character. To grasp the full darkness of the figure, our article on the dark history of Cletus Kasady traces his origins in the comics.

The film also introduces Shriek (Naomie Harris), Cletus's mutant partner armed with a devastating sonic scream, a faithful accomplice to the chaos she spreads in the comics. The toxic relationship between Cletus and Shriek echoes, in a distorted mirror, the one between Eddie and Venom. The final confrontation in a cathedral, black against red, plays cleverly on the weakness common to all symbiotes: sound and fire. Venom wins by a whisker, devouring Carnage and closing the Kasady chapter.

The post-credits scene that blew up the internet

It's impossible to discuss this film without mentioning its post-credits scene, one of the most talked-about in recent superhero cinema. As Eddie and Venom lounge in a hotel room, reality wavers: they are briefly transported into the universe of the MCU, where the television is showing Tom Holland's face as Spider-Man. That reveal sets the stage for Venom's appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home and its opening of the multiverse, where the duo turn up fleetingly in a Mexican bar before heading off again, leaving behind a tiny fragment of symbiote.

Venom: The Last Dance (2024): the final tango

Released on 25 October 2024, this third and final film closes the trilogy and forms the fifth instalment of the Sony's Spider-Man Universe. It marks the directing debut of Kelly Marcel, screenwriter on all three films, who co-wrote the story with Tom Hardy himself. This last chapter fully embraces the emotional dimension of the double act: it is no longer just an action comedy, it is the story of a goodbye.

Knull, the Xenophages and the final hunt

The stakes finally rise to a cosmic scale. From his prison at the heart of the planet Klyntar, the god of the symbiotes Knull is trying to escape. To that end he unleashes his hunters, the Xenophages, on Venom's trail, because Venom carries a codex, a key capable of freeing the god. That threat extends onto the screen a mythology the comics have developed over years: to understand the scale of the character, our feature on Knull, the god of the symbiotes sheds light on everything the film only skims.

Hunted by the government and by the Xenophages, Eddie and Venom go on the run across the United States, crossing paths with a family on a road trip and with a scientist fascinated by symbiotes, Dr Teddy Payne (Juno Temple), inside a secret base reminiscent of the famous Area 51. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays General Rex Strickland, a soldier determined to hunt the creature down. The film piles on the spectacular set pieces, including a flight on the back of a symbiotic horse that became an instant cult favourite among fans.

A sacrifice that closes the loop

The finale plays out at the military base, overwhelmed by a swarm of Xenophages. To stop the codex falling into Knull's claws and to save Eddie, Venom sacrifices himself, dissolving in a bath of acid that wipes out the creatures. The last dance of the title then takes on its full meaning: it is the heartbreaking farewell of one being to the one who was, for six years, his other half and his best friend. The post-credits scene does leave a door ajar, though: Knull remains imprisoned, but a fragment of symbiote has survived, hinting at a possible return.

TOTAL IMMERSION

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The Venom trilogy at a glance

To place the three films clearly, with their dates, their directors and their antagonists, here is a summary table of the complete saga.

Tom Hardy, the soul of the saga

It would be dishonest to analyse this trilogy without doing justice to the man who carries it from end to end: Tom Hardy. A demanding actor, known for his intensity in Bronson, Warrior and Mad Max: Fury Road, he could have treated Venom as a simple pay cheque. He did exactly the opposite. Hardy got involved in the writing, notably on The Last Dance, and defended a precise vision: that of a buddy movie in disguise, where the real subject is never the action but the relationship between the two beings.

The story goes that Tom Hardy improvised a good part of the exchanges between Eddie and Venom on set, forever searching for the right balance between the slapstick and the pathetic. It is that freedom of performance, rare in a carefully mapped-out blockbuster, that gives the saga its particular streak of madness. At no point do you sense the actor holding back or sneering at the material: he believes in it, and his conviction rubs off on the viewer.

His performance rests on an uncommon physical and vocal gymnastics. He plays Eddie, a tired, clumsy, endearing man, while giving Venom a deep voice and a comic swagger that make you forget it is the same actor. That duality is the key to the saga's popular success: audiences did not turn up for a terrifying supervillain, but for a dysfunctional couple they ended up loving. That approach breaks radically with the image of the Venom of the comics, a divergence you can measure by comparing the films with the many alternative versions of Venom across the multiverse.

What the films change compared with the comics

The film saga takes enormous liberties with the source material, and that is precisely what has fuelled the debates between purists and the general public. The most striking difference is of course the total absence of Spider-Man. In the comics, the symbiote first bonds with Peter Parker before being rejected, then feeds its hatred of the hero by merging with Eddie Brock. Without Spider-Man, the films had to reinvent the character's origin and his deepest motivation from scratch.

Another major departure: the tone. The Venom of the pages is a figure of pure horror, a head-devouring predator. The films keep that cannibal dimension but wrap it in humour, turning the brutal antihero into a comic companion. Finally, the handling of Carnage disappointed a section of the fans: in the comics, Cletus Kasady is one of the most demonic killers in the whole universe, the driving force behind devastating events such as Maximum Carnage and Absolute Carnage. His treatment on screen, more perfunctory, does not entirely do justice to his status. For collectors and fans who want to extend the universe beyond the screen, choosing the right merchandise deserves a proper guide, and that is exactly the purpose of our complete guide to choosing your Venom and symbiote products.

A TRUE FAN'S WAKE-UP

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Venom and the rest of the Sony's Spider-Man Universe

The Venom trilogy never truly merged with the other SSU films, despite a few attempts at connection. Morbius (2022), with Jared Leto as the living vampire, ended on a confused post-credits scene involving Michael Keaton's Vulture, without ever managing to weave a clear narrative thread with Eddie Brock. Our analysis of why Morbius is a villain apart revisits this character, poorly used on screen.

The last two satellites, Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter, both released in 2024, met with difficult critical and commercial receptions, to the point of calling into question the very future of the SSU in this form. In that context, Venom stands out as a golden exception: the only franchise of the lot to have united a wide audience across three whole films. The paradox is striking, because it was also the concept that looked, on paper, the most likely of all to come a cropper.

Should you watch the Venom saga today?

If you come to these films looking for a masterpiece of screenwriting or a literal adaptation of the comics, you're heading for disappointment. But if you take them for what they are — three uninhibited blockbusters, carried by a unique chemistry between an actor and his digital creature — they offer generous, funny entertainment that is, in its final act, surprisingly touching. The trilogy has the rare merit of having a real ending, a complete arc running from the meeting to the farewell, something rare in modern franchise cinema.

To carry on exploring, you can follow up with other gems of the arachnid big screen: our pick of the best Spider-Man film of all time places the Venom saga within the web-slinger's vast cinematic landscape, and lets you measure the distance travelled since 2002. And if you want to organise a themed night around the symbiote, our guide to where to watch the Spider-Man films on streaming in France will help you track down the whole trilogy easily.

In the end, the Venom saga will be remembered as an improbable gamble that became a cultural success. Tom Hardy gave a monster from the comics a soul, a sense of humour and a fragility nobody expected. The black symbiote, once Peter Parker's pure nightmare, has become a figure beloved by the wider public on screen. It was not faithfulness that made these films strong, but daring. And sometimes, at the cinema, daring is enough to give birth to a legend people go on celebrating long after the closing credits.