After years of false starts and dropped projects, Marvel's black-suit anti-hero Venom finally chomped his way to his own big-screen standalone film in 2018, breaking box office records and ingesting criminal pancreases along the way. Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) directs a script by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg, and Kelly Marcel, while Tom Hardy stars with an energy and commitment usually reserved for competitive powerlifting as Eddie Brock, a journalist who binds with the alien symbiote known as Venom. With the film heading toward 4K Blu-ray, we snagged a copy to see if it's worth adding to your collection.

The Movie

Venom on 4K is still the same ol' whacky, haphazard film you remember from the theater. Investigative journalist Eddie Brock is living a personally and professionally successful life in San Francisco with fiance Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) when an attempt to interview sketchy tech billionaire Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) lands Eddie out of a job and out of a relationship. When Eddie tries to dig deeper into Drake, he encounters the alien race known as Symbiotes, one of which, Venom, forms a bond with Eddie's body, taking it over and giving the journalist extraordinary, gooey powers.

This film made roughly 10 bajillion dollars at the worldwide box office but it's also kind of all over the place. The third act thuddingly arrives with all the subtly of a crashed alien spaceship, and Carlton Drake's antagonist motivation—and along with him, the villainous Symbiote—never amounts to more than a stock, base-level characterization.

But if Venom is a mess, it's one holy hell of an entertaining mess. Like I said, Tom Hardy commits to this film harder than I've ever committed to a relationship in my life. The scene where Eddie straight freaks out in a fancy restaurant, culminating in Hardy plunging into a lobster tank, is a genuine highlight of 2018.

Plus—*spoilers*, if you still haven't seen the film—a post-credits stinger featuring Woody Harrelson as Carnage teases some intriguing stuff to come.

Is It Worth the 4K Upgrade?

Venom isn't the most dynamically shot superhero movie of the year; the color palate is actually pretty drab throughout, and besides a few frames of the Golden Gate Bridge there aren't many sweeping shots or dynamic touches to satisfy the more technical aspect-inclined viewers among us. But with that said, while Venom the movie doesn't look particularly impressive in 4K, Venom the character does.

If it's one thing besides Hardy's performance that's impressive in Venom, it's the work the VFX team did to bring the titular tongue-wagging alien to life in all his Symbiotic glory. With a good enough TV, the Blu-ray really allows you to soak in all the details of the Venom design; the sheer amount of teeth they stuffed into his mouth, the fluidity of Eddie Brock transforming into his alter ego, the way Venom—and even Riot—are constantly in fluid motion like a living cloud of oil.

So while I can't exactly recommend the 4K price tag for straight up film enthusiasts, I would say it's worth it for diehard fans of the Venom character itself.

Bonus Features

Pretty much any behind-the-scenes look of Hardy doing his thing—of which there's plenty hidden in the Bonus Features section—is almost worth the price of admission alone. A lot of the extra mini-docs discussing the film, though—like "From Symbiote to Screen", detailing the character's history—are a bit of a let-down. Everyone is clearly passionate about the project—interviews include Fleischer, producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach, and Kevin Smith, who is billed as a "comics expert"—but the violent, psychopathic character they're all describing doesn't really gel with the Venom we got in the finished product, no matter how many times they say it. (There is a certain entertainment value to be had from Michelle Williams occasionally looking like she's there under gunpoint.)

"Venom Mode" is a pretty cool little tag-on feature, a setting that sees factoids and trivia popping up throughout Venom's runtime. Probably the best extra from a pure technical perspective is a look at the pre-vis process of a few of the more action-heavy scenes.

But the true gem of the bonus features is—and, again, just in case, *spoilers*—an extended version of Woody Harrelson and his wonderful red wig as the future-Carnage, Cletus Kasady. It's not extended by much, but what was cut out was Harrelson going absolutely balls-to-the-wall bonkers with the character, all bug-eyed and unpredictable. When Venom inevitably gets a sequel, it's the Woody Harrelson in this extended scene I want to see.