Tom Hardy (“Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Inception”) and Michelle Williams (“Shutter Island,” “The Greatest Showman,” “Brokeback Mountain”) star in Sony Marvel’s first official installation to their “Spider-Verse,” “Venom.”

Hardy stars as Eddie Brock, an investigative journalist who’s life falls apart after digging into pharmacy mogul, turned space-exploration field leader: Carlton Drake (played by Riz Ahmed). Eddie discovers that Drake is using poor and disenfranchised individuals to run trials of human mergers with alien lifeforms, knows as symbiotes.  Following a break-in gone awry, Eddie now shares his body with the head-eating, sadistic symbiote Venom and the two must learn to coexist in order to stop a symbiote invasion of the Earth.

The film boasts strong performances from the whole cast, but Hardy’s Jekyll-and-Hyde portrayal of the conflict between Eddie and Venom is the standout performance of the film. As Hardy manages to illustrate the dichotomy of having to coexist with a foreign, murderous entity. Hardy does so magnificently, balancing the moments more grotesque in nature with just enough humor as to avoid becoming overly grim and bleak.

Despite being critically panned and ostracized for some tonal inconsistencies,  receiving an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 30%, the film was received generally positive reception from audiences with a B+ Cinemascore and earned an 89% audience score from Rotten Tomatoes.

The box office numbers reflect this positive reception, as Venom managed to capture the title for the biggest domestic opening weekend in October ever, bringing in an estimated $80 million, with the opening global box office earnings for the film being approximately $205 million.

“Venom” isn’t some genre-defining work (a la “The Dark Knight”), nor is it the magnum opus of a decade’s worth of interconnected films (a la “Avengers: Infinity War”). Instead it’s a buddy-cop movie with some horror aesthetics, meant to set a strong foundation for Sony Marvel’s interconnected Spider-Man Universe.

“Venom” is truly a comic book film, in its plot and with its  outlandish, straight-from-the-panel, action scenes. The film draws inspiration from the studio’s previous Spider-Man trilogy under the direction of Sam Raimi, and is only the tip of the iceberg for for Sony Marvel’s future plans of an interconnected universe. As with the casting of Jared Leto (“Dallas Buyer’s Club,” “American Psycho,” “Suicide Squad”) as living vampire and Spider-Man villain, Morbius, Sony Marvel clearly intends to bring Spidey’s infamous rogues gallery to the silver screen for years to come.

With Hardy reportedly signed for a three picture deal and the mid-credit scene teasing another beloved comic book character, its assumed that a trilogy was always the plan for Sony. So now with the film’s outstanding opening weekend and the overwhelmingly positive audience reception, audiences will likely be treated to Eddie Brock and his carnivorous alter-ego’s adventures again in the  near future.