Sony's Venom is a messy, oozing bag of contradictions both inside and out. Despite an almost unanimously poor reception from critics, audiences flocked to it, likely driven by a preexisting love for the Spider-Man villain and by a morbid "how bad a can a Marvel movie really be?" curiosity. That turnout resulted in a record-breaking $205 million in international box office takings for the film's opening weekend. Not only did Venom pull in an unexpectedly large crowd, but the vast majority of that crowd liked it a lot more than professional reviewers, creating a disparity of nearly 60 percent on Rotten Tomatoes between critic and audience opinion.

RELATED: Sony’s Venom Ultimately Fails Its (Anti-) Hero

Gaps of this size are, more often than not, hard to explain beyond a simple difference of opinion -- but not so much in the case of Venom. Tom Hardy's symbiote-infused Eddie Brock is clearly not only big enough to toss cars around and rip heads clean off, but also big enough to distract the average moviegoer from a ropey plot, forgettable side characters and clunky dialogue. It's a film that is carried entirely by the erratic strength of its lead actor, which becomes even clearer once you learn that Hardy improvised some of the funniest Eddie/Venom interactions.

If you're willing to ride the crazy train with Hardy and be charmed by the gross-yet-oddly-endearing weirdness of Venom as a character, one of the few comic book elements the film does justice, then it's easy to overlook the rest of the film's considerable flaws. Is it body horror? Is it an alien invasion movie? Is it a buddy comedy-turned-freaky-romance? Who cares about all of that dull internal messiness when you've got the wonderful on-screen messiness of a three-way make-out session between Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams and some sentient black space goo.

It's this magnetic central performance from Hardy, coupled with Venom's general lack of pretentiousness, that arguably separates it from other critically panned superhero movies like Catwoman, which it has drawn unfavorable comparisons to, and more recent efforts like Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, both of which caused a similar division between critics and audiences. The latter two failed because they reached for something big and fell completely flat, and in taking themselves too seriously couldn't provide enough cheesy entertainment value to cross into the hallowed "so bad, it's good" category.

Catwoman failed on just about every front but, interestingly, is a closer tonal comparison for Venom, which feels very much like a throwback to a more schlocky and less self-conscious era of superhero movie-making. The montage of Eddie doing his social justice journalism schtick at the start even uses comic book-style panels in the way that Ang Lee's Hulk did in 2003.

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There's a case to be made that Venom succeeds for its fans because it possesses a lot of key ingredients that turn films from forgotten failures into cult movies. Its grounding in sci-fi and horror -- once considered lowly B-movie genres -- stands it in good stead, even incorporating some of the flesh-eating monster movie DNA of classics like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

But, unlike films like Snakes on a Plane, it doesn't do this consciously. Cult movies might be shoddily made, such as Birdemic, but they have to be earnest and innocent in spirit. Venom is a curious mix of both trying too hard and too little at once, an unremarkable story housing a remarkable lead performance that sees Tom Hardy make dramatic pivots between a romantic rebel with a cause and a cannibalistic version of The Mask. Perhaps the film would have benefited from an R-rating, but perhaps it also would have benefited from everyone else being told to try and bring as much ham to the picnic has Hardy.

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There is, of course, one major thing working against Venom's chances of snagging cult movie status. There's a commonly upheld belief that only films that flew under the mainstream radar can qualify, which Venom certainly hasn't. Given that well-known box office successes like Fight Club and Mean Girls make the cut, though, this rule is a loose one. Another contradiction comes from the fact that the list includes films as varying in quality as the highly cerebral Donnie Darko and the gloriously stupid The Room. A cult movie can be a "good" movie that was underappreciated in its time or a "bad" movie that still holds a particular charm for a particular group.

RELATED: Tom Hardy’s Bonkers Eddie Brock Is the Best Part of Venom

The concept of cult films appears to be an ever-evolving one, with the only true commonality being whether a movie is embraced enthusiastically by enough of a percentage of its audience. A dedicated and loyal fan following is what stopped The Rocky Horror Picture Show from fading into obscurity in the '70s, with cosplay, audience participation and late night screenings becoming the foundation for establishing a film's cult reputation.

The Room would benefit from this treatment decades later, and, though Venom is still fresh in theaters, Sony's President of International Distribution told Deadline that there were already kids sporting the black and white costume to school after catching a screening on the weekend. In true online quick-to-the-draw fashion, artists have also already been sharing fan art of the film's weirdest highlights.

Likewise, it's easy to imagine some of Venom and Eddie's quippiest exchanges being echoed by repeat watchers before too long -- quotability is another important box to tick for anything to have cult appeal. Sure, you could chalk this up to the general goodwill for all things superhero related right now, but only time will tell whether Venom has enough bite to outlast the genre's golden years.

RELATED: Venom As a Horror Movie Would Have Fixed A Lot Of Its Problems

Working perhaps most crucially in Venom's favor is the critical drubbing it has received. Dismissal by the mainstream media made it something of an underdog rather than a film guaranteed to succeed thanks to its Marvel merits, which most now view as a trusted brand of quality. A lot of four and five-star reviews from audience members include lines like, "don't believe the critics" and "it's not that bad." These days, giving a poor review to a DC or Marvel movie is, for some fans, further evidence of an out-of-touch media elite.

Critics, by their own admission, do get things wrong sometimes. One TIME reviewer described The Rocky Horror Picture Show as "campy trash" when it was first released in 1975. A decade later, the publication conceded that it had become "a cross-generational phenomenon." The same can be said of the Wachowski's visually ambitious Speed Racer adaptation, a critical and commercial bomb that enough people remembered fondly to mark its recent 10-year anniversary with contrastingly positive retrospectives. It could be that the internet-powered time we're living in supercharges the speed of this process, or we'll just have to wait until 2028 to see how Venom's legacy -- if it has one -- will be measured.