Venom Carnage spin-off director on choosing which Venom to use
By Daniel Wood
The Venom spin-off movie is an intriguing prospect because it has the opportunity to right the wrongs of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 which many people feel absolutely ruined the debut of one of the Spider-Man universe’s most popular characters. Many people see this as Sony’s shot at redeeming themselves with the character.
It’s also an intriguing prospect because so far in the Amazing Spider-Man cinematic universe we haven’t had any hints of Venom and we haven’t really been introduced to any of the possible characters who could eventually become Venom, with the exception of brief appearances from Flash Thompson. Essentially every possibility is still on the table, but what will spin-off director Alex Kurtzman do?
Will he go for Eddie Brock, the original Venom, who was a journalist that was disgraced by Spider-Man exposing that Eddie had accused the wrong person of being a serial killer. Eddie blamed Spider-Man for his misfortune which consequently made him the perfect host by a rejected symbiote that also held hatred towards Spider-Man. This iteration of Venom was originally a fully fledged villain, but he also attempts to be an admittedly violent vigilante, as well as becoming anti-hero Anti-Venom.
The second Venom was Mac Gargan, who was formerly Scorpion. A symbiote wearing Gargan became part of the Sinister Twelve (can’t wait for that film). When wearing the symbiote Gargan lost almost all of his personality and was controlled almost exclusively by the symbiote leading him to cannibalism. Gargan would later go on to become Ven-orpion (a cross between Scorpion and Venom). Mac Gargan’s Venom is pretty much a bad guy through and through so there’s no real scope for character development.
The third possible candidate is Flash Thompson, who we’ve seen in Amazing Spider-Man, and in a deleted scene in Amazing Spider-Man 2 played by Chris Zylka. Now Flash is a problem for the studio in terms of continuity because if they go for him do they keep Chris Zylka as Flash and having him as the film’s lead, or do they recast? If they do go for Flash Thompson though they get the most heroic Venom of them all. Thompson’s Venom was recruited by the government to work as a hero in the military. Flash chose to be bonded so that he could get his legs back after previously losing them as a soldier.
Of course it’s possible that Sony could combine this alterations into one sort of super-Venom, changing the source material to amalgamate everything into one. We could see Eddie Brock start off as Venom exactly like he does in the comic books, but then we might get Eddie becoming Agent Venom instead.
But what does Alex Kurtzman have to say about it, let’s see what he told Spinoff?
"Yeah, before last Friday came out, we started kind of roughing out a story. Ed Solomon’s going to be writing it very soon. I can’t tell you too much, but I’m really excited about it.I would not say [picking the incarnation of Venom is] an easy choice. I would say that there are quite a few things about Venom that are interesting. Venom had several different iterations, and there are several things that are very unique, interesting and specific. And so I think we all want to make sure that we’re making the right choices for a character that’s so beloved."
So it seems that nobody really knows what Venom we’ll be seeing in the Venom Carnage spin-off. Personally I don’t care that much as long as they do the character justice. Venom really, really deserves it.
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