Venom: Let There Be Carnage is like the second-season premiere of a Neil Simon buddy-clash TV sitcom in the guise of a comic-book-superhero-monster movie. You can hear the intro to the show in your head: Can two beings, one an intergalactic sociopath with magical powers and the other a hangdog Internet journalist, share a body without driving each other crazy?
The first Venom told the story of Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), who ends up with the creature Venom living inside him and whose hunger for human brains and general destruction he must figure out some way to contain. This is a Marvel Comics situation, I gather, related in some way to Spider-Man. (I will forbear insulting comic books at this point, as some of my best friends like them.) It was not good at all—it was mostly a bad non-musical...