Venom

I'm just disappointed that this means we'll probably won't see Venom in the MCU. The good thing is that Spidey has such a good Rogues Gallery, that this will allow some spotlight to be cast on the more overlooked villains. I'm very happy Mysterio's the next villain, so I hope we won't lose too many villains to Sony's future films.

Yeah like not saying Venom can't be a solo hero but his story is unlike many other villains intrinsically tied to Spidey.

Without the matrimony made in rage & abandonment its not wholly Venom.

Its missing the important beginning so it be sad if we never see it.

Honestly, I see only good things coming from Sony having proven that you can totally divorce a supervillain from his designated hero and still make him interesting and get the audience invested in him.

The precedent established by Venom's success opens up a wealth of filmmaking possibilities in the form of solo movies starring villains (Journey into Mystery), unlikely team-ups (Dr. Strange and Doom: Triumph and Torment), and cross-franchise battles (Spider-Man v. the Mandarin! Captain America v. Magneto! Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers!).

Y'know. That interconnectedness that makes the comic book shared universe so great, because the characters don't all live in their own isolated bubbles where they only ever interact with the one superhero.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 26th 2018 at 8:32:04 AM

That seems like a bit of a leap and kind of putting a lot of credit on Venom's doorstep. Maybe it sounds like sour grapes and maybe it partly is, but I think the timing of coming out in the middle of a bit of a months-long drought of superhero movies has got to factor into it. There is a certain hunger that Infinity War put an edge on — pun intended.

I'm also not quite seeing an open door to bigger, wilder crossovers based on Venom, but maybe it is a first step. That being said, I don't just want quantity over quality to come out of this. Venom feels like a bit of a dodged bullet, and without Tom Hardy and that effects crew I keep mentioning, I'm still leery of any of Sony's future plans.

Edited by Unsung on Nov 27th 2018 at 8:48:20 AM

It's very simple. If a Spider-Man-based movie without Spider-Man made money for Sony, a Spider-Man-based movie with Spider-Man in it would make a lot more money for Sony. You're also misunderstanding of what I'm saying because you're overlooking a crucial aspect of this whole situation: This is literally a reworked version of Sony's plan with Amazing Spiderman 2. The Sony plan after Amazing Spider-Man was to dive headfirst into Spidey villain spin-offs centered around The Sinister Six. The unmitigated disaster of AM 2 killed those plans in their tracks, so they turned the property to Marvel to see if someone else can get the ball rolling so they can launch their Spidey villain spin-offs. It's literally the exact same thing reskinned.

I'm not saying they're dropping Spidey villain spin-offs like a sack of bricks for the chance of Spider-Man. I'm saying their plan all along was to converge these villain spin-offs into a Spider-Man cinematic universe, as they literally stated they wanted to do before Amazing Spider-Man 2 killed those plans.

Now, what you can argue is that Sony moved on from those plans, learned to share or something to that effect. But you cannot deny the precedent can lead to some more pessimistic conclusions.

It's entirely possible I'm being overly grim on the situation, but I also get the sense you're being overly optimistic with the righteous impact Venom will have in the film business.

They did scrap the plan after Amazing 2's failure. The next movie after Amazing 2 was supposed to be a Green Goblin spinoff, following Harry from Amazing 2's ending.

Venom has been in Development Hell since the Raimi years. It's totally unrelated to the Amazing universe Sony intended to build. This is a film they've been trying to produce since Topher Grace played the titular character. It is not the result of Sony keepin' on truckin' with the Amazing plans, minus Andrew Garfield.

You're not wrong that Sony's trying to build a cinematic universe off of this, but Venom marks the start of something new, not a continuation of the old. Something that doesn't necessarily need Spider-Man.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 26th 2018 at 10:43:01 AM

Did you like the Venom film Tobias? You normally don't get this argumentative about something unless you have strong feelings about the subject, positive or negative.

Edited by VeryMelon on Nov 27th 2018 at 7:08:21 AM

Ehh, yes and no. I'd give it a solid 7, personally. There was a lot to like, some great jokes, and I loved the symbiote's depiction.

At the same time, Carlton Drake and Riot are both in desperate need of a rewrite. I could not take Drake seriously for the same reason I couldn't take Ant-Man's Damien Cross seriously: too over-the-top cartoonishly super-evil, to the point that every time he was onscreen, his totally ridiculous lack of believability took me out of the film.

Now, Drake had an out for that. They could have had him be a symbiote host from the start, which would explain both why he's just so bad at faking even the slightest bit of humanity and how he somehow manages to have good publicity despite openly acting like Satan and Hitler's love-child. They did not do that.

Also, the movie's not great with women. Of the three female characters in the movie, the only one who isn't dead by the closing credits is the hero's ex-girlfriend who he intends to reconquer from her new boyfriend - with one of the last jokes in the movie and, indeed, the reveal that Venom isn't dead coming in the form of the symbiote plotting her reclamation.

One of the film's funniest jokes also employs a gendered slur.

So. Yeah. The movie needs work.

What I have strong opinions about is the culture surrounding the film. I feel that there has been a pervasive effort to frame the narrative about the movie - even before it came out! - as a miserable flop that proves once and for all that Venom cannot function as a character without Spider-Man.

The very existence of a Venom movie that isn't about Spider-Man touched off a mini-culture war in the fandom that I find ridiculous. Venom is an okay movie. It's not great. There are many things that could have improved it. But of all the things that might have benefit the film, "spend half its runtime on Spider-Man and squeeze everything else into the margins" isn't something that comes to mind.

With all due respect: f*ck Spider-Man. I've got nothing against the guy or his films, but this movie didn't need him and shoehorning him into it would have done nothing to improve it.

EDIT: I'm also legitimately enthusiastic about the idea of making villain movies without the title hero. I think it's really clever. Part of the problem with superhero films is that there are so many great villains to any one hero, so a lot of them just don't get to make film debuts. Like, who the f*ck cares about Kraven the Hunter when Doc Ock, the Green Goblin, Venom, etc. are Spider-Man's "iconic" foes?

Film isn't like comics. You can't produce 12-24 movies in a year all starring the same guy. There's a limit to how many villains one film superhero can fight in a ten-year span. So a lot of villains just aren't going to make the cut, and that means their fans will never get to see their film debut.

Sony hit on the idea, "What if we just made the movies without the title hero? That way, we can squeeze more mileage out of the limited character roster we have to work with?" And I really think that's a phenomenal idea. It was stupid when it was meant to spin out of Amazing 2 and star Gwen Stacy's Fridge-Stuffer, but now that they're starting from scratch, I really do have high hopes for it.

And seeing the box office takings only gives me confidence that Sony will stay this course and keep on truckin'.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 27th 2018 at 8:07:55 AM

I'd be more supportive of that if this movie wasn't about a character who's existence is directly connected to & defined by the hero.

Venom's no Joker, he doesn't exist just cause regardless of Spidey. He was outright created as a result of the shit in Spidey's life going to overdrive.

Its like saying Ultron doesn't need to be created by Pym or in this case Stark. If you remove his connection to the heroes, all that's left is a generic evil robot overlord whose very existence is an unfixable mistake on the heroes part.

If we were talking about like a Green Goblin or Dr. Octopus movie then sure that might work but not with Venom.

Edited by slimcoder on Nov 27th 2018 at 7:42:24 AM

The key difference between us is this: You're putting a lot (a lot) of faith in Sony's intelligence and goodwill and I'm putting absolutely none. We're only really going to find this out circa Far From Home so in the end, time will tell which one of us is right.

I'm sure there were fans who were frothing at the mouth to have this be a Spider-Man movie guest-starring Venom, but I don't think that was really the tenor of this thread, so the force behind the argument just seems a little abrupt. People here might have liked a nod toward Spider-Man, I don't think it's crazy to say that Eddie and the symbiote's consuming hatred of Spider-Man/Peter Parker is a fairly significant, interesting character beat to lose, but I don't think anyone was ever really expecting Tom Holland to show up at all, let alone for any significant runtime. The complaints here were mostly over how it didn't really feel like Venom — the trailers played like more of a psychological thriller, and seemed determined not to show the zany "A Boy and His Flesh-Eating Blob" Buddy Comedy that the movie actually is.

Edited by Unsung on Nov 27th 2018 at 10:26:04 AM

...I need to look at more psychological thrillers then, because those trailers did not feel like psychological thrillers to me.

I think Green Goblin is even more tied to his nemesis than Venom is.

Norman of course has Dark Reign but he wasn't green goblining that. Generally he greens the goblin to show up and cause Spider-Man some grief. Or devotes years of his life to trying to mindfuck Peter.

Mediocre to bad as they could be, Venom had his lethal protector stuff. His hatred for Carnage. Even a time pre-Agent Venom that was basically Agent Venom. Working for the government with a bomb in his chest to keep him in line. Even went undercover as a nun.

There was devoted effort put into trying to make Venom his own thing.

I can imagine Venom having stuff to do with Spider-Man off the board but what does Green Goblin do?

Edited by Bocaj on Nov 27th 2018 at 11:03:52 AM

Kraven the Hunter I feel is the one who works best outside of Spidey, strangely enough. His shtick of Hunting the Most Dangerous Game lends itself nicely to spin-off stories to the point I'm somewhat surprised people don't use him for that purpose more often.

What I wouldn't give for a mockumentary starring Kraven the Hunter (and a kidnapped camera crew) going around New York talking to the camera like Steve Irwin about the wild creatures of the city before trying to wrestler/capture them.

I mean. As you pointed out in that third paragraph, MCU Ultron was created by Stark. Adaptations change details all the time. Remember that time when S.H.I.E.L.D. turned out to be infested with Hydra and had to be abolished once and for all to end the Hydra threat? Because that didn't happen in the comics.

What about that time when Doc Ock sacrificed himself to die a noble death, ending the threat to the world that he'd created? Because he's a 100% reprehensible shit-bag in the comics.

How about the fact that not one adaptation of Venom, not one, has ever featured Spider-Man acquiring the symbiote during Secret War? Not even the 90's cartoon, which actually did adapt Secret War in a later season long after the character was introduced?

Infinity War invented a completely new motivation for Thanos, removing his courtship of Death and replacing it with a philosophical ideology.

The comic Ragnarok event had absolutely nothing to do with the Planet Hulk miniseries. Also, Hela has never been Thor and Loki's sister.

Things change in adaptation all the time to suit the story that the film is trying to tell. It's fair to ask whether or not these changes are good ones, but in order to answer that, one needs to answer whether or not faithfulness to the source material would have benefit the film. What possible benefit would this movie have gained from devoting some of its run-time to Peter Parker and rushing or cutting out other plot points to make room for it?

Pedantic purism is not worth appealing to if it provides nothing of substantial value to the film. Topher Grace got his symbiote from Spider-Man. Can anyone honestly say that Spider-Man 3 was a better Venom movie?

Has Kraven ever fought the Lizard? Because it feels really obvious

Change can be good, but they didn't really replace Venom's vendetta with anything, and I would argue that the movie would've been better for having that shared hatred exist in some form. It didn't have to be Spider-Man, but they didn't really have anything better planned, and they could found some way to tie that in with Eddie crashing and burning out of journalism as long as they were going to do that anyway. Not with the teenage Peter Parker, but as long as they were changing things and running with the idea that it's an alternate universe, they could've made Parker any age they pleased, or just made up a new character entirely. The point isn't so much Spider-Man for me, just that seed of darkness in Eddie Brock.

You've said that this movie bodes well for villains carrying their own movies, but the things that made Venom a villain, at least to begin with, aren't really there. He's just an unlucky guy and his monster pal.

@dragonfire5000 More like the weird horror/mystery thrillers of the '90s. I'm not saying that was everyone's take on it, but there was a general sense that the movie wasn't really willing to let Venom be Venom.

Edited by Unsung on Nov 27th 2018 at 10:27:51 AM

On the discussion of Venom's actual characters, I found one of the key problems of this movie the fact it isn't really what I find interesting Venom. A case could be made its not even Venom. Its closer to a Joe Fixit-era Hulk adaptation. The root of the character for me, which is Brock being a shitty person saddled with a symbiote that is pretty unhinged (partly as a result of Brock being a shitty person), isn't there. It's a down-on-his luck guy paired with a callous brute.

Oddly not too often. He has faced Vermin and Rhino before though.

Edited by Gaon on Nov 27th 2018 at 8:57:35 AM

That's fair. I think that's another way the film might have benefit from Drake and Riot being the same dude from the start. They could capture that shared animosity via Eddie hating the guy for ruining his life and Venom feeling used and betrayed by his experiments (which would make a better motivation than the symbiote abruptly deciding, with insufficient lead-up, that he likes the human world now).

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 27th 2018 at 10:23:18 AM

Yeah. Oddly enough I do feel like Tom Hardy sold that, though. It's a motivation that's entirely too convenient and really comes out of nowhere, but "On my world, I'm considered something of a loser" is somehow a weirdly genuine moment, whether it makes sense or not.

Edited by Unsung on Nov 27th 2018 at 12:17:28 PM

It looks like he will in an upcoming arc of Nick Spencer's The Amazing Spider-Man.

I know Kraven hunted the Lizard in the Spider-Man 3 video game. He was aided by Calypso and he was killing the people Dr. Connors mutated into lizard-people.

Just pointing out I never liked the change in Ultron’s origin.

If there’s anything that truly counts as a regrettable mistake in the MCU, is that Tony created Ultron, not Hank.

Some things ya just don’t change. Ya can’t change Batman’s origin for one.

Edited by slimcoder on Nov 27th 2018 at 1:13:49 AM

The original 1989 Batman film, highly regarded as a classic, made the Joker responsible for shooting Batman's parents.

The Telltale game, which I highly recommend for everyone, had the shocking reveal that Bruce's parents were actually mob bosses themselves and were deliberately assassinated.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 27th 2018 at 2:41:39 AM

And?

Not really much of a change, there have been stories where Batman went after Joe Chill so it’s not that special.

It still kept that his parents were shot to death & that’s what motivated him.

Edited by slimcoder on Nov 27th 2018 at 1:42:33 AM