Venom (2018) - Teaser Trailer Reaction
And then today the trailer for 'Venom' came out today.
For a bit of context here, Venom originated as an extraterrestrial symbiote who latched-on to Peter Parker's Spider-Man suit, enhancing his strength and abilities, but also distorting his mind. As Spidey began to realise this, he faced an inner struggle as to whether or not to keep the symbiote before tearing it off him completely, falling into the hands of Eddie Brock. Brock, who already has a vendetta against Peter Parker and/or Spider-Man (depending on which version of the story this is), uses the symbiote (and vice-versa) to become the super-villain Venom - essentially Spidey's evil doppelganger, whose strength poses a greater threat to the hero than any of his other antagonists (that is, of course, until Carnage comes along). Venom is a character with an interesting backstory, but once Venom actually becomes Venom, it gets pretty difficult to really develop the character in interesting ways without just turning him into an anti-hero - which, from what I've heard, has worked well in an alternate Venom comic book story-line where Flash Thompson becomes Venom, but I don't really know anything about that to be honest.
So here we have Venom's solo movie and...there are no apparent ties to Spider-Man whatsoever; the origin people are most familiar with looks to be ditched entirely; there's no hint to the symbiote's extraterrestrial nature; there's nothing to indicate whether or not Tom Hardy is actually playing Eddie Brock or perhaps Flash Thompson; the focus appears to be on making Venom simply an anti-hero (a "cool" Spider-Man if you will); and there's no sign of Venom actually in this movie whatsoever. Get rid of the name and the Marvel logo and it might as well be a generic Tom Hardy action flick, that's how friggin' bland this looks.
For starters, Tom Hardy is not the guy you should want to cast as any version of Venom. He's a talented actor, as proven in a variety of his film roles, but he's such a prominent star that you run into the inevitable issue whereby the audience wants to see the star and not the actual character, and thus we run into the 'Spider-Man 3' problem of having Venom frequently "un-mask" himself to show off the talent underneath. From the looks of this trailer, a good chunk of the film has him as a generic lead in a generic-looking action movie. In fact, from the look of this trailer, there was only one visual effects shot in the entire thing: that being the brief look at the symbiote in a glass tube.
So what's the story of this 'Venom' movie? My assumption is that Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock (probably in name only) will be involved in some kind of science experiment involving the symbiote, get infected and then struggle with his inner demons established earlier-on in the film. Whoever the antagonist is (probably Riz Ahmed) will want to fight back, maybe becoming Carnage in the process, the two fight, Venom becomes a sort-of anti-hero and then the movie ends with a post-credits scene teasing a Spider-Man cross-over, possibly featuring Tom Holland. That's my theory about what 'Venom' is about, based upon this teaser trailer, and it sounds pretty shite. Perhaps if done with a character who isn't Venom, or maybe with a Venom who has already been established as a Spidey villain, you could make something out of this, but the fact of the matter is that no attention is being paid to the character's backstory. That wouldn't be such a bad thing if it wasn't for the fact that what we get instead is so generic and far away from the original ideas and story that it makes the entire project seem completely redundant. None of the fanboys are going to like 'Venom' if its a complete reinvention of the character, and the general audience has no reason to see this other than Tom Hardy. Sony Pictures are making a dud, and they don't seem to have realised yet.
Now, by some chance its possible that 'Venom' IS the movie we all want it to be, but part of the problem is that I - and I think many will agree with me here - never wanted a standalone Venom movie in the first place. There's no reason to make this movie other than to profit off of a mildly popular brand name. This trailer doesn't even want to showcase the Spider-Man connection - the only reason most people would go and see this film.
Essentially, 'Venom' sucks, and that's kinda annoying after 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' and the teaser trailer for 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' bode so well for Spidey's cinematic future.
Comments
Post a Comment