Venom.

- Venom. (2018, Dir. Ruben Fleischer). Exposé journalist Eddie Brock is down on his luck. After messing with an immensely powerful billionaire, Brock has lost his job, his home and his fiancée. He has also recently gotten involved with a new story involving what appear to be alien parasites. And here Brock might have a chance to turn around his life... for better or even worse. All thanks to a whole new paramour --one of the alien parasites, who goes by the name "Venom"...

Immensely fun superhero... okay, "anti-hero" movie, and a seminal lesson in how to adapt a comic book to the screen: Specifically by cutting out all unnecessary baggage. It cuts the character of Venom out of anything related to Spider-man and the extended Marvel Universe, and the result is a more entertaining film with a lead character that quite a few people have identified with. (It also pisses off a certain type of critic and blogger, which while not at all important to the movie itself is a satisfying result, honestly). 

More important is the way the movie holds up regardless of the comparison to other current superhero movies. It's basically a buddy action film (with the kind of romantic subtext that becomes text as the story goes on), with a good-natured yet highly reluctant protagonist. Eddie Brock is no hero, or more accurately no devil-may-care action man -he's simply a distressed guy trying to be good. That he winds up paired with another underdog (well, by alien standards) is simply one chance he seizes and just happens to get lucky with. 

Also notable is Brock's ex-fiancee, Anne. What would normally be a put-upon, estranged love interest, is if anything a character with as much darkness as Venom (rather than Brock) --as she points out early in the movie, she is a lawyer who defends the very people Brock denounces, and after briefly donning the Venom symbiote, actually does kill somebody, which she comes to terms with rather quickly. By the end of the movie she was switched to pro-bono cases, perhaps having come to terms with her own dark impulses. 

Are there flaws? Yes, though not really the ones you have heard. The CGI does what it's supposed to do, which is create an image that should feel literally Alien, something not quite of this world, only vaguely familiar. Rather the problem is with the mandatory connection to other Marvel movies --the usual cameo by Stan Lee (dispensing a very inappropriate piece of advice) and a rather worthless after-credits scene that is literally a clip from "Into the Spider-verse" (that it's animated and thus completely at odds with the movie we just saw is another major problem). The mid-credits scene, with another mandatory cameo from the comic books, is somewhat more interesting... oh, okay, to hell with avoiding spoilers: 

It's a cameo by serial killer Cletus Kasady (aka Carnage). It's also a scene we have seen a million times before, with villains ranging from Hannibal Lecter to several versions of The Joker. It still does what it's supposed to. 

Overall, a genuinely entertaining action (or sci-fi, or superhero) movie that is --well, it's as divisive as you have heard. Decide for yourself.