Venom: Expectation Anxiety (A Johnny Rootbeer Guest Blog)
Yesterday, the internet was graced by another trailer for Sony’s Venom solo movie.
Now friends, what you need to know about me is that Venom is one of my favorite comic characters, so I really, really want this movie to be good. You know what, not even good, I’ll take “half-way decent” at this point, after the last time the grinning goop man was featured on the big screen….in Spider-Man 3, the movie that all my friends know not to talk about around me or else be dragged into a rant about how they absolutely butchered the character six ways from Sunday. But that’s another article entirely.
So, I’m here today to break down what I loved, liked and didn’t like about this trailer and what we’ve seen so far:
THE GOOD
The Look: Venom has never looked better outside of the comics, the grinning mouth! The tongue, long but not comically long! The teeth! It’s all here, except for one humongous detail that will be noted further down this list. Some of the animations in this new trailer were choppy, but the parts where we see Venom moving and talking, damn, I’m satisfied.
The Dynamic: Most of Venom’s stories involve Eddie (or whoever is wearing the symbiote at the time) dealing with keeping the suit from cutting loose and eating everyone’s face. Eddie tells the symbiote in this trailer that he doesn’t want to hurt any innocents, and the suit makes no guarantees.I appreciate they didn’t turn Eddie into a walking sociopath like they did in Spider-Man 3. Topher Grace’s line “I like being evil, it makes me happy.” still causes me to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Venom only wants to hurt one person, Spider-Man (But Y’KNOW…)
The Humor: I’ve been seeing a lot of people online complaining about the groan-worthy humor attempts on display in the trailer. Honestly, I love it. The bit at the end with Venom telling the robber that he’s going to “Eat both your arms, then both your legs, then eat your face right off of your head, then you will be this armless, legless faceless thing rolling down the street. Like a turd. In the wind.” This is quintessential 90’s Venom solo comic writing, I’m all in, ham it up Big V.
THE BAD
Main Villain: Now, this could totally not be the case in the full movie, but its being said that out of all of the symbiotes featured in the story, Riot will be the main adversary. Now, I thought Riot was pretty neat in the comics but this choice just doesn’t make any sense to me from a visual standpoint. You have 5 symbiotes (Riot, Scream, Agony, Phage and Lasher, assuming they’re all in the movie) that come in all different colors, yellow/red, purple, green and…gray. They picked the big gray one to fight the big black one. That is not going to be fun to watch. They do actually show a few of the different colors in this new trailer so maybe they will come into play, but from what we’ve seen so far, Venom vs Riot looks like a jumbled visual mess.
No Spidey: Now theres at least one billion articles online right now about this, so I’ll make this quick: Its really fucking dumb to not have Spider-Man involved at all.Venom as a character will lose a lot more than his white spider symbol without Spidey-Peter as a foil to drive him. I’m going to hold out hope that by the end of the movie we get at least a little glimpse of him, or at least a passing mention.
THE UGLY
The way that doctor lady says “Sym-Bye-Oats” Holy shit, kill me.
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