The teaser trailer for Venom dropped yesterday, and sure enough, everyone had opinions about it. The majority of those opinions were pretty harsh, varying from “This doesn’t really look interesting in the scope of things,” to “What a waste of time this will be!” to “How can we tolerate such a slight to our Supreme Leader Kevin Feige?!” And as a hardcore Spider-Man fan and a devout follower of the MCU, I have to ask: Why all the hate? So today I’d like to confront some of the criticisms about this movie born from a less than 2-minute teaser and a weird displaced loyalty to an entertainment monopoly.
How will the movie work without Spider-Man? This is probably the most common criticism of the Venom movie that I’ve heard, and I actually have several responses to this. For one, we have no confirmation that Tom Holland will not appear. It may not be likely, but to say definitively that he will not make an appearance is a big assumption. Second, even if Tom Holland does not make an appearance, that does not mean Sony won’t use Spider-Man. Sony still has rights to the character, and while it would be simpler and more streamlined to make it Tom Holland, nothing is legally stopping Sony from including a few quick shots of the Spider-Man suit and imagery to imply and assert the character’s involvement in the movie’s events. It doesn’t take a lot to suggest the existence of a character.
Now, a lot of people are saying that Venom does not make sense without a relationship with Spider-Man, and in a classical sense, they are right. Originally, the Venom symbiote naturally gravitated toward Eddie Brock because of their shared hatred of Spider-Man. However, to say that this origin is the complete summation of Venom’s character would be unfairly and inaccurately putting him into a very restricted box. Post-Birth of Venom, the symbiote-Brock character went through several variations in which he acted as a more morally gray villain or even antihero, especially in the 90s and early 2000s. We have also seen the symbiote evolve over the years, splitting off into various offspring, attaching to Superior Spider-Man and tapping into the Doc Ock personality, and even showing preference for Flash Thompson over Eddie Brock as a host. Venom has developed its own mythos that, while deeply intertwined with Spider-Man, does not necessarily depend on the character to create its own niche in the comic book world.
Where will the character go after this? With the absence of direct relationship to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a lot of people are arguing that the mere creation of this movie is pointless or irrelevant because it will not be interwoven into the larger Avengers universe. Honestly, this is a relatively new opinion that has cropped up due to the Marvel advent of 2008 Iron Man and the establishment of cinematic world-building. While what Marvel has done with their cinematic universe is beyond impressive, comic book fans in general have begun to overgeneralize this approach to every film franchise. But honestly, it doesn’t have to apply to every license. Sure, build your Avengers, your X-Men, and your Justice League with interwoven movies and shared universes. But keep in mind that movies can be good when they stand alone, too. I for one am eager to watch a comic book-based narrative without having to recall what happened 8 movies ago. It’s better business for mass appeal, and it can let fans take the night off with their exhaustive hypothesizing and big-picture conjecture. I love going to every new Marvel movie and counting down to Infinity War, but I’ll be relieved to watch Venom and just be able to say, “Cool, that was a insert opinion movie. On to the next one.” In our enthusiasm to world-build and get lost in a universe, we must never lose our ability to appreciate something for what it is rather than we expect it to be. Which brings me to my next criticism and response.
“There’s no way Sony can pull this off!” Man, I can barely stand the hypocrisy of this one. Apparently, everyone has had collective amnesia and forgotten about Spider-Man 2, a movie made by Sony that everyone touts as possibly the best superhero movie ever made (which, by the way, features a grossly rewritten Doctor Octopus character whose significant changes nobody seems to mind in their nostalgia, but that’s for another day). While Spider-Man 3 has wounded me for years, I am willing and able to understand that not everything a studio creates is going to be stellar. Everyone has forgotten Thor: The Dark World’s struggling plot and slow pace; everyone has conveniently forgotten Gwen Stacy’s beautiful death scene in Amazing Spider-Man 2. But more worrying than this amnesia is everyone’s strangely misplaced loyalty to “Marvel and only Marvel” or, more significantly, “Disney and only Disney.” There is no arguing that Disney has established an incredible standard of quality, but associating any and all quality with a single production entity toes a very steep line of elitism that comic book fans cannot afford if we truly care about comic books being for everybody.
Honestly everyone, I’m tired. I’m tired of not being allowed to just be happy about superheroes anymore. Every single non-Marvel property that comes out, people feel the need to point out exclusively the negatives. Every new take on a character, fans spit vitriol about SJWs and post-modernity ruining comics. One bad DC movie, and people are calling for Ben Affleck’s head when he was the last thing wrong with Batman v. Superman. Four films into the new Justice League universe and people are drawing contrasts to Marvel and calling for a total reboot rather than letting the process work and seeing what happens. Disney absorbs Fox and the people rejoice, having conveniently forgotten about what terrific movies X2 and First Class were, sacrificing variety for uniformity under a common brand. I watched the Venom teaser, and I was happily intrigued. It didn’t show the whole movie, it has a different tone from most superhero movies you’ve seen, and it asked a lot of questions about how characters will turn out given some storytelling difficulties. Within minutes, I was besieged on all sides by complaints, criticisms, and skepticism about Sony’s pure audacity to even do something with what they have. If I were on the outside of comic book culture, my only conclusion was that fans don’t even want to be happy anymore. If something doesn’t fit within their control, expectations, and brand, then they will be happiest stewing in their anger. The medium has come too far to be portrayed like this.
Why did Sony even bother making a Venom movie? I don’t know. Maybe they believed that fans could be excited about something again.
