It’s been a while since I had a good ‘ol fashioned rant, but a piece of information came out this week and I couldn’t help but take to the interwebs and let you Towelites know what I was thinking about. It was recently announced that Sony will be producing a stand-alone Venom movie. We’ve been hearing developments on this film for years now, with the most recent being that Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Amazing Spider-Man) would be directing. All those plans went Symbiote-up when Sony was hacked and a lot of emails came to light referencing the studios plans to double-down on the Spider-franchise. Obviously all of those grand ideas were dissolved and we were lucky enough to have Marvel swoop in and put everyone’s favorite Wall Crawler in the upcoming Civil War film.
So, let’s flash forward to the present. A Venom movie has been announced and according to THR, the film will have nothing to do with everyone’s favorite Wall Crawler. Let’s refer to this snippet from the article.
Sony has tapped Dante Harper to pen a script for Venom
In case you don’t know who Dante Harper is, he was the writer of Edge of Tomorrow. That movie is completely underrated and completely amazing. I’m certainly on board with his writing prowess, so nothing troubling there. Then things take a turn for the worse. “….is being envisioned as a franchise apart from and unrelated to the upcoming Spider-Man movie in the works with actor Tom Holland.” I’m sorry, but are you kidding me right now?! The entire reason that Venom exists is because Peter Parker brought the symbiote down from an alien planet during the Secret Wars and it eventually attached to his rival Eddie Brock; turning him into the Lethal Protector himself, Venom. He is the Anti Spider-Man.
Now, there is a possibility that scrapping that storyline could work, if they decide to go with the recent Venom storylines, where the symbiote is attached to Peter Parker’s schoolyard bully, Flash Thompson. Flash gets his legs blown off in a war and the symbiote creates a suit around him that not only gives him the ability to walk, but also has Spawn-like properties so that he can use it as a weapon. The government then sends Flash out on Black Ops missions. Given the recent success of another superhero Mercanary film named Deadpool, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the R-rated route the decide to go down. It wouldn’t be my ideal Venom, but it’s one I could live with.
Finally the most concerning piece of information from the article is this: “Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach, among stewards of the Spider-Man properties, are producing and overseeing the project.” If you remember pretty much any of the early superhero movies from the early 2000’s, Arad had his hands in them. At the time, Marvel was going through a rough patch and they basically sold off the rights of all of their characters to get turned into films and avoid bankruptcy. Arad, the former CEO of ToyBiz, was a toymaker with fiendish dreams of making movies. He exploited Marvels lack of funds, took chief creative control on the films, and drove their film franchises into the ground. X-Men: Origins and Ghost Rider 2 anyone?
In a time when Superhero films weren’t everywhere like they are now, this was OK that he was at least getting the films out there. The movies don’t all stand the test of time too much, but at least there was something for fans to grasp on to outside of the comic books. As time went on though, you could tell he was just being greedy and it became a matter of Quantity over Quality. Luckily for us, Kevin Feige (Head of Marvel Studios) was able to get away from Arad and merge with Disney to start producing the films we know today. Arad worked/works on Sony films only, and we all know how The Amazing Spider-Man films turned out.
The TL:DR of this whole article is that, I can’t really say that a Venom movie is going to be bad without seeing it first; or at least the trialer. I can say that I don’t like the idea of the character existing away from Spider-Man. I don’t even know how they will explain the symbiote without Parker’s involvement, but I’m sure they’ll find a weak way to do it. A Flash Thompson film may be the lesser of the two evils, but I’m still not on board just yet. Arad’s involvement has me skepitcal at best.
Let me know what you’re thoughts are on the Venon stand-alone film either in the comments or hitting me up on Twitter.
