Venom

Shoulda saved Venom for the next Spider-Man movie, then spun off into a Redemption Arc. As it is, I'm more invested in who the narrator is than Eddie.

“but I'm almost positive that they don't want a supernatural/psychological In-Name-Only thriller adaptation of the property that doesn't even have the symbiote in it. “

I’d be into that . After watching Legion I want more totally put there superhero adaptations. The ones that border on not even really being superhero movies or one of the constituent genres (action adventure/ action comedy and the like).

edited 8th Feb '18 9:49:43 AM by thatindiantroper

Well that was kind of boring.

I mean, supernatural psychological thrillers with superheroes is literally what this looks like, and it looks amazing:

But that's because there's, like, enough footage to at least have a basic understanding of the premise. The Venom teaser just says, "Our movie has spooky cancer."

This could afford to be a lot further out there, is my point. Right now this looks more like Fallen than Venom. I love Legion, Legion played its best visuals pretty close to the chest at first, but it was unabashedly weird right from its very first promos. This just looks generic.

I'm actually excited for New Mutants, but that vibe on that is more horror than thriller. What I meant to say was this looked like a bog-standard procedural sort of thing...from the late '90s. Which kinda doesn't seem like the best fit when your character is as over the top as Venom...except for maybe the late '90s part.

edited 9th Feb '18 3:11:49 PM by Unsung

Sony better hope the actual trailer gets better opinions...

I’m I the only who doesn’t like the title font? It doesn’t really clash well with the tone they are trying to portray in the teaser.

Think i'd prefer they were trying to match the tone to the font than the other way around.

Apparently, the official Sony Twitter account is posting weird responses towards people about the rumored cameo by Tom Holland...

edited 8th Feb '18 2:19:10 PM by TargetmasterJoe

I don't mind a more subtle trailer that doesn't show too much, but the issue here is that if you take out the one shot of the black goo, this could be a trailer for any other horror/thriller film. You don't need to show Eddie in the full costume immediately (and they probably can't), but it's weird that a trailer for Venom doesn't really feel like... a trailer for Venom. Cool, Tom Hardy can do a decent accent. What else you got?

I'll agree that they really didn't need to have a trailer right this second. No one was asking for one, and this one was not particularly convincing.

edited 9th Feb '18 2:02:35 AM by edvedd

Isn't this just the teaser for the actual trailer?

Like, the least you could do here is having Venom's distorted voice talk back to Eddie's monologue at some point, hinting the classic dynamic in which Eddie and his symbiote converse in some form. You could keep Eddie's monologue the literal same but at the finishing moments of the trailer you could have a distorted Evil Sounds Deep voice commenting "(Evil Laugh) And it's time to do something about it, Eddie."

That'd already improve it for me.

See, we're so used to that now, but this IS in fact, a proper teaser trailer.

That would be pretty cool.

I'm already not sold on the fact that they're using Cancer Suit Venom from the Ultimate comics instead of Alien Symbiote Venom from the 616, and having that kind of internal discourse would have helped me feel more confident in this project. A big part of why Cancer Suit Venom is so bland is because the symbiote itself isn't really a character.

The Venom symbiote is delightfully complex in its own right. It has its own feelings and motivations and goals. It has a gestalt personality composited from the things it's learned from previous hosts. It's not evil by necessity but through the choices it makes.

It has a general desire to do good that it learned from Spider-Man but it's also homicidally angry at him and everything he stands for because he rejected it. It's an ex-lover who flips out, comes to your house, and nails your cat to your front door, but then goes home, stands up for somebody being picked on, stabs the person picking on them through the throat, and says, "I'm a good person. ^.^"

With host Eddie Brock reinforcing its negative qualities because he's just straight-up a shitty human being or host Flash Thompson reinforcing its positive qualities and trying to teach it how not to be a murderous shit-weasel. The dynamic between the Venom symbiote and the Venom host is easily the most interesting and engaging aspect of the character.

Also it must subsist on a diet of brains or chocolate. Your choice.

Cancer Suit Venom is basically just a violent cannibal monster that subsumes its host and uses them to eat people because OM NOM NOM HUMAN FLESH.

I am almost 99% sure they are going to essentially graft the origin of the ultimate symbiote into the 616 one but otherwise maintain the exact same character. Granted, the teaser doesn't exactly fill me with hope, but I think they can't be that stupid when the central appeal of Venom is that back-and-forth as you said. Just like I don't think they'll be stupid enough to use Ultimate Carnage when the popular one is 616 Carnage.

I mean they can't be that stupid can they?

Given that they seem to be presenting this as a thriller about the demons inside, they might be. At the very least, I'll be shocked if the Venom symbiote isn't presented as pure concentrated liquid evil that feeds on evil and compels you to do evil, as it always is in adaptations.

Best case scenario, this will probably be a story about Eddie being a well-meaning screw-up who's trying to use a dark and sinister force for good. Because as much as adaptations love demonizing the symbiote, they also enjoy making Eddie into a sympathetic and even tragic figure rather than the self-centered amoral dipshit he is in the comics.

For all its flaws, Spider-Man 3 at least understood that Eddie's not a good guy who fell from grace; he's always been a shit-weasel. Praying for God to murder Peter Parker is the most accurate-to-comic-canon thing I've ever seen an Eddie Brock adaptation do.

edited 9th Feb '18 7:56:50 AM by TobiasDrake

They want anti-hero Venom without putting in any of the work to get to that point.

....I am getting increasingly pessimistic about this movie.

The most depressing thing to me about the cancer suit symbiote is that we're in a place now where people think we're going to cure cancer before we go back to the moon.

I mean, I'd rather we did. Between people not dying from cancer and scoring a few sweet space rocks, my priority's on the former.

We only went up there the first time because we wanted to scrape our butts on it before the Soviets could get there.

edited 9th Feb '18 3:18:22 PM by TobiasDrake

Unless we can colonize the moon we should focus on curing the shit.

Yes, obviously if cancer has a cure, we should cure it, but they're not mutually exclusive, is my point. There was a time when the goal would have been *both*, not just whatever we could get. And I do think that downward adjustment of people's expectations limits not only space research, but research into the sciences in general, including medicine and cancer studies.

edited 9th Feb '18 3:25:21 PM by Unsung

Now, if you really want to get us to agree to head back up there, what you need is to have Republicans in office and show them lunar images of the American flag. It's bleached white courtesy of solar radiation. It no longer looks like America has laid claim to the moon forevermore; now it just looks like the moon is surrendering in the face of global warming.

Take those pictures to a Republican President and be like "This is an attack on your penis size! By the sun!" I promise you, there will be a lunar expedition tomorrow.

edited 9th Feb '18 3:24:28 PM by TobiasDrake

That's what I'm expecting too.

That might be a tad optimistic though. Sony hasn't exactly filled me with confidence judging by how they handled ASM in the end.

Spiderman is probably going to go into space in infinity war. The opportunity for a venom movie was basically gift wrapped for them. But I guess Sony was too impatient.