10 biggest movies of 2018

10. Venom

Battling scathing critical reviews, Venom nonetheless clawed (oozed?) its way to 10th place in the list of highest grossing films this year, finishing its box office run at $212 million. Despite a truly fetid critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes—currently at 26%—the popular vote was in the Sony superhero movie’s favor. The audience score sailed over the critic reviews with an 86% approval rating, a dichotomy which honestly makes a lot of sense. Venom is a hot mess and pretty much the antithesis of what appeals to critics in a film, but it’s also a ton of fun.

Tom Hardy’s a large part of what made this movie a success—coming from high-grossing movies such as Mad Max: Fury Road ($153 million) and The Dark Knight Rises ($448 million), he’s certainly becoming recognizable enough to put audience members in seats. But more importantly, he absolutely nails the role, portraying Eddie Brock as a floundering and disillusioned idealist who is already at the end of his rope before he gets infected with an alien symbiote. His Venom-fueled antics are funny and charming enough to make up for the tepid action scenes and generally incoherent plot.

In the end, Venom is a movie about two losers finally finding each other more than it was a superhero movie. If it had abandoned any attempt at being mainstream and instead committed to being a weird pseudo-romantic alien buddy-cop movie, it would have been a better film; but with its $100 million budget, Sony is walking away from this one pretty happy. Granted, it’s happy enough that they’re making more movies in the Venom universe, but how it plans on doing so without Spider-Man, the character around which Venom in the comics necessarily revolves, remains to be seen.

Also, if you haven’t yet seen Sony’s holiday trailer for Venom, you definitely should check that out. Yes, it’s an official trailer. Yes, it’s amazing.