Tom Hardy plays a successful investigative journalist with the perfect life and the woman of his dreams. Everything is great until he becomes fixated on a corrupt scientist, Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), also known for his Emmy win for his role in the HBO miniseries, “The Night Of.”

Ahmed’s character discovers an alien symbiote that can turn a human host into a superhuman. However, the symbiotes feed off of human organs essentially eating their hosts from the inside out. When Hardy accidentally comes in contact with a symbiote while secretly gathering pictures of the scientist’s lab, he meets his new alter-ego symbiote, Venom.

Hardy had been approached with many other roles, but it was until he read the “Venom” script that made him commit. He was beat out of the “Doctor Strange” role by Benedict Cumberbatch, considered for an “X-Men” prequel as a young Wolverine but the movie never took off, and nearly played the role of John Connor in the “Terminator: Genesis,” but the part was later finalized by Jason Clark.

During an interview for Fandango All Access, Hardy explained what made Venom such a special role. “What really drew me to [Venom] was the Jekyll and Hyde aspect to him.”

He enjoyed the back and forth battle between good and evil, therefore, making it difficult to determine whether he is a hero or a villain at the beginning for those unaware of the anti-hero.

Hardy is known for his roles in “Inception,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” His television debut was in a miniseries of “Band of Brothers” in 2001.

The director of “Venom,” Ruben Fleischer, really inserted his own style into the production. Known for his direction in the movie, “Zombieland,” Fleischer takes a dark and sinister story and lightens the mood with some laughter. He did this by casting Hardy as Venom knowing very well the type of humor he would execute.

The visuals throughout the movie were breath-taking, especially the few transitions from human to symbiote. The details to Venom’s face were so life-like that it brought much more excitement to the fight scenes.

The film score was the only downside. All of the songs were an instrumental orchestra and the movie probably would have benefitted from vocals and bass. It never took away from the movie but if one thing could be changed, the music could have been slightly more relatable.

Venom broke the best opening weekend record for an October release at the box office with an estimated $80 million domestically.

Business Insider said, “Venom has an 89% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and earned four out of five stars from audience exit polls, leading to a B+ Cinemascore.”

Venom is not your average Marvel character, but that is what makes this movie so outstanding.