Headscratchers / Venom (2018)

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Why do the symbiotes need a host?

• Exactly why can't the symbiotes survive on Earth without a host? There was a mention about "an oxygen-rich environment" but then that would mean that either they'd be poisoned by the oxygen, or the atmosphere doesn't have whatever element they need to breathe, so they'd suffocate. Either way it would imply a very quick and agonizing death for the symbiote, like a slug drenched with salt or a fish out of water. Yet they're perfectly fine when confined inside the Life Foundation's containers, and Venom himself, separated from Eddie, was able to escape into the vents and track down the dog as a temporary host without showing any ill effects in that time span.
  • Presumably the holding tanks were built with some sort of environment the symbiotes could survive. When they're squishy goo outside a host notice they're never host-less for very long.
  • They're symbiotes, the word "symbiosis" itself means they need to bind themselves with another lifeform.
  • It's not unusual for a real-world symbiont to be able to survive for a while between hosts, in some cases for days or longer, even if they need a host for long term survival. If breathing is the only issue for these symbiotes, it's worth noting that many creatures, including humans and fish, can go at least a few minutes without breathing if they need to. We don't see a symbiote survive outside of a host (or a container designed to keep them alive) for longer than that.

Where did Venom form his facial features?

• Separated from Eddie, Venom is just a shapeless, oozing mass, but when bonded can manifest a face with eyes and teeth, and can form a separate head in order to speak with Eddie. Where does the eyeballs, teeth and tongue come from, anyway?
  • Same way Riot forms axe & saber, probably by shaping, changing texture & may be duplicating organ structure.

Symbiote mass changing in transformations

• Where does all the extra symbiote mass stay when Eddie is in his normal human form? He gains over two feet in height and a lot more body mass when he transforms, so does it all cram inside his body cavity? Does some take the form of his clothes? Is there any explicit mass-shifting present?
  • Probably the same place Hulk's extra mass stays when he is Bruce Banner.
  • This might not be an answer but I'll try. Originally in the comics the Venom suit was just that. A suit. It was a very form fitting suit and Venom was a big guy because Eddie Brock was built like a tank. New writers came on and figured if the symbiote could create its own webbing then it can give Eddie more mass. Which kinda makes sense because it implies something is present to begin with. Also originally in the comics the symbiotes (except Carnage) don't house themselves inside the host. They're clothing worn outside. This movie took a few liberties.
• Mass shifting is one of those abilities that comes with shape-shifting. Mystique changed into a dwarf in the Days of Future Past film.

Riot keeping an old lady for six months

• Why did the Riot symbiote still have the old lady as a host, even after six months? It was established that symbiotes cannot stay bonded to their hosts for extended amount of time and need to travel from host to host.
  • It is also established via Venom that the symbiote, so long as it can procure a suitable source of food, can chose not harm the host and even heal them. Riot certainly doesn't care for his hosts as anything other than vehicles, but perhaps he didn't find what he thought was a compatible host until he came across the little girl, and kept the old lady going for longer out of pragmatism.
  • I assume that Riot found the old lady a relatively good host: she had no family or friends as far as we know and being an old lady, she's far less conspicuous (less than the astronaut and EMT at least) and can easily blend into a crowd.

Six months from Malaysia to San Francisco

• Why did it take six months for the Riot symbiote to fly from Malaysia to San Francisco, when there are direct flights to San Francisco that take less than a day?
  • Possibly it didn't know where to go. All it initially had was a patch with the Life logo on it. It spent those six months doing detective work in order to go from "here's a Life corporation logo" to "oh, I need to go to this specific location if I want to get a ride into space"
  • The director admitted the six months were a Plot Hole for the sake of Eddie's character development.
  • I suppose the symbiote stayed in Malaysia longer to practice human behaviour or something like that.
  • Riot may also have been waiting for one or more of the other symbiotes to contact him for orders. He's their commander, after all: it's probably beneath his dignity to immediately set about the donkey-work of chasing after his underlings.

The SWAT team's encounter with Venom

• Are the SWAT team keeping quiet about Venom? How is Brock not arrested at the end? He still broke into the building. He has to be on cameras, right?
  • All they have to do is provide credible evidence to a judge that Eddie can turn into a giant alien tooth monster and how he got up 80 stories. Oh, and prove he's not the same as the giant alien tooth monster Carlton Drake publicly turned into before he slaughtered shedloads of people. And then get past that lawyer ex of Eddie's. Given how much LF-related corruption is probably being exposed, the system would probably be trying to get everything to go away as quickly as possible, even if they had anyone who could actually ID Eddie; he seems to be on good terms with the news company in the ending, and they might not even want to press charges with the massive scoop he just gave them.
  • The last thing Carlton Drake wants, at that point, is for Eddie to wind up in the hands of the police. Any proof that Eddie was there would've been wiped on Drake's orders, the better to ensure only his men will be hauling Brock back for interrogation and study.

Personal delivery instead of E-Mail

• Eddie broke into the news station's skyscraper to give incriminating photos from Life Corporation to his former news editor...by leaving Eddie's personal cellphone on the editor's desk. Why not just email or text the photos to the editor?
  • Pretty much answered by the Gilligan Cut ("PUSSY"). Venom is a thrillseeker and wants to get Eddie seeking the same type of thrills, and digital communication has nothing on scaling the building and physically breaking into it.
  • Because the editor might not accept it from Eddie's email, and might even be tapped by the Life Foundation.

Vulnerability to Fire vs Driving a Bike Through Fire

• What is it about the stoppie maneuver on the bike which makes it easier for Eddie (and for that matter his fire-vulnerable symbiote) to travel through blue flames than any other stunt including a normal two-wheeled ride through?
  • The drone was on track to hit Eddie directly, which, given the drone’s explosive payload, probably would have been like getting hit with a rocket. By doing the stoppie, Venom turns a probably fatal impact into “just” riding through flames. Even then, it was only a brief exposure due to their speed.
  • It's possible that the Venom symbiote was protecting Eddie from the blue flames despite the pain to itself, and it was just short enough contact that the flames didn't cause much more than a little easily healed damage to the symbiote. Also recall that the Venom symbiote does apparently survive the explosion from the rocket at the end and can regenerate Eddie's wounds; it's possible that so long as there's a piece of the symbiote left it can regrow back to its normal size eventually. This tracks with the comics, where symbiotes are shown to be able to split off pieces of themselves to create new symbiotes, similar to how amoeba reproduce. In fact, that's originally what Riot was - an offspring of Venom's.

Life Foundation with advanced tech

• Carlton Drake is apparently searching other planets for resources/living space on a routine basis. So does the Life Foundation have faster-than-light spacecraft? How is that not a bigger deal to everyone in the story? It's world-changing technology.
  • Maybe this technology is too dangerous to be used on the planet's surface, so it's only used for interstellar flights. As for why it's not a bigger deal in story, it has probably been around for a while, so they are used to it.
  • Nothing ever says it's FTL. The comet the symbiotes were found on could be passing through the solar system on its way elsewhere, or the symbiotes live on it specifically because it allows them to migrate to new worlds and consume the populations. The original intent of the flight (before the comet with lifeforms was found on it) could have just been either testing the feasibility of a new, super-efficient long-range spaceship engine, or using that new engine to survey worlds within the solar system. Colonizing beyond the solar system may have been Drake's ultimate goal, but even being able to make sustainable colonies on Mars would be a HUGE step forward. (And the main thing preventing manned space travel now is that our current engines are far too inefficient to make such trips feasible.)

Human-alien symbiosis

• The entire movie up until Eddie Brock bonds with Venom involves the antagonist Carlton Drake struggling to try and find humans that are even REMOTELY compatible with their potential Symbiote hosts. Even when human testing was begun, the movie depicts the very first human test subject to be brutally murdered by the symbiote attempting to bond with him. Cut to after Venom bonds with Eddie, and suddenly this entire issue of host compatibility seems to no longer be an issue. Riot is found bonded to a random little girl, who survived long enough to walk all the way into Drake's company building to interact with him; Drake himself had no issue with bonding with Riot, and Venom was even able to bond with a random hospital visitor's dog for long enough to seek out and bond with Anne before returning to Eddie Brock. So what happened? Why is symbiote-host compatibility suddenly a complete non-issue? This is never explained by the movie.
  • I think it was an issue of not having a sufficient (and probably live) food source. It wasn't just that the symbiotes were killing their hosts, they were eating them/drawing out too many nutrients (Venom even makes a joke at the end about eating one of Eddie's organs in hunger).
    • I also assumed that the symbiotes were just getting better at keeping even incompatible hosts alive. Venom could ride on a dog for a few minutes, and Anne was a regular match. And Riot manages to keep the random EMT alive for a few hours or days, and the old lady for six months. He might've been suppressing the bad effects on Drake somehow, or Drake just happened to be a good host.
  • Even when Drake managed to find compatible hosts, he was not providing for the symbiote's dietary needs, so the symbiotes still burned out their hosts. A technician notes that they're giving the subjects "enough liquid nutrition to feed an elephant," but their internal organs are still degrading, because this nutrition is useless to the symbiote and it has to eat its own host to stay alive. Riot likely has far better ability to blend with incompatible hosts, given his other impressive abilities, and Venom found a perfect match with Eddie, enough to sustain him with less-than-ideal matches with a dog and (possibly) Ann.

Riot not thinkin his plan through

• Is it just me or is Riot really not thinking his plan through? He’s bringing his army of symbiotes to a planet inherently hostile to his form of life, where finding a host that won’t burn out, at best in a matter of months, is a massive game of Russian roulette? And up against a species who can use their biggest vulnerabilities (fire and sonics)? This doesn’t sound all that bright.
  • For the weaknesses, Riot has no way of knowing they can abuse their Kryptonite. For everything else, the symbiotes can survive longer than a few months in a host if the match is good enough and they can eat more than just the people they'd be using as hosts. I'd imagine the plan goes something like, "Hey guys, lets lay low until we have our people positioned right where we want them then BAM!"

Brock specifically chosen to interview Drake

• Brock asks why he’s being sent to interview Carlton instead of someone else, and I don’t recall there being a good explanation. Even if Brock didn’t want to turn the interview into a "gotcha" grill-session, his style is totally unsuited for a Diane Sawyer-style puff piece with a business magnate. Why on earth would his boss choose him?
  • Brock had a Deep-Throat-like reputation of being an idealist on a grass-root level, which brings all the dirty stuff to light. Presumably it was arranged by Carlton so it would de-fang the rumors about his abuses by association with Brock just giving him an interview.