Okay, first I need to explain what Nonstiq articles on this gaming website are. Nonstiq posts are either rants, reviews, or anything outside the gaming industry that we want to talk about. So don’t think of me as a professional or expert on any of these subjects, I’m just a big fan of Spider-Man and other characters within that property and want to talk about this news. They generally aren't peer reviewed or Edited like the usual stuff. So if spelling or grammatical error tick you off you’ve been warned.

One other thing, since Nonstiq posts are more flexible and less serious than the already Not-serious stuff we do here on Twinstiq, I want to give you a bit of a lead in so while reading my thoughts you can better understand the state of mind I’m in, as well as what kind of Spidey fan I am. If you don’t care about any of that shit (oh yeah we swear in Nonstiq posts too) then feel free to scroll down to the GIANT YELLOW TEXT at the start of my rant. For the rest of you, read on.

So, a quick bit of history about myself and my relation to Spidey and Venom. Obviously as a kid I loved Spider-Man, but that doesn’t really make anyone unique, I know. Pretty common for someone’s favorite Superhero to be one of the big three after all. But I grew up in Rural Alaska, so my access to the character for the longest time was limited to re-runs of Spider-Man and His Amazing friends, along with a couple issues from my Godfather’s comic collection on the occasion I could visit him. When I was five years old he bought me my first, and only comic for a LONG time, Amazing Spider-Man #423. So my favorite villain became Electro seeing as that was the one I had in an actual comic book, at least for a while.

I can’t recall the first time I saw Venom, or how old I was by then, but I was taken by storm. I quickly rushed to learn about him, and how Peter himself had donned a black suit before he was even around. Of course being so young I would become attached to such a striking character design. But if you asked me now who my favorite Spidey villain is, he wouldn’t make the top 5. (It’s Mysterio by the way) Over time after reading so much Eddie Brock adventures and even Kasady as Carnage, I started to become bored with what I grew to recognize as a fairly one note villain. As i read more and more stories and learned about characters and how writing them works, I saw that the character really never got as much development as many other Marvel characters, let alone Spider-Man ones.

It wouldn’t really be until my college years that Rick Remender would revitalize Venom in a huge fucking way. He finally gave it depth. By having Flash Thompson take the mantle under the moniker Agent Venom, not only did Flash become an extremely well fleshed out character, but the symbiote did as well. And together they grew as characters are supposed to, with Flash fighting it’s corruption and it fighting Flash’s good heart, and by the end them eventually meeting somewhere in the middle. Not only was this well done, it was well received not just by me but many other readers. So it’s no surprise now that the Symbiote has attached itself to another shit-head character people don't like it... but that’s another topic for another day. 

Now, one more thing before I talk about this Venom movie news. This segment is more about how my day has been so you can judge for yourself if you think maybe it’s because of any external reason I have the opinions I do. It has been a LONG day. My day job requires a lot of driving. And some days I need to start early to get somewhere on time, and some days I need to work later many miles from home. Today, both of those were the case. Granted I’ve had longer days, and harder ones. But after waking up at 5:30 AM, driving 350 miles according to Google maps, which was 6 hours of my 11 hour work day, getting home hoping to play chill out and play some more STEEP, I flick on some Youtube news while I grab some water and see that Sony is making a Venom movie. Suddenly I felt the need to start writing this overly long winded article about it on the internet. So take that as you will, but that’s where I’m at while writing this on the day of the announcement.

RANT STARTS HERE:

Sony, look. I know you’re never going to read this, but I’m projecting. Ya’ll dropped the ball with your last three Spider-Man movies. None of the villains were handled correctly in any of them. All for very different reasons that would take much longer to explain than this. I know you’re really hoping that fucking emoji movie will give you a billion dollar franchise of your own, since you really have nothing in the film department right now. And yeah, you got Homecoming around the corner, but we both know you’re super pissed about having to suck off Marvel in order to get those asses in seats. So I’m betting you’re hoping to god you can milk the one other character in the Spidey-verse that is guaranteed to do that. Look at me Sony. You have a couple ways this becomes a big fucking success story for you.  For simplicity’s sake let’s break it down into the the two possibilities of the obvious question first;

Will this film be a part of the MCU, or will it be it’s own stand-alone movie?

1. This first movie is a stand alone one and done.

I know you don’t want this obviously. And I could entertain the idea of putting Peter in the suit first to stay true to the source and then throw Brock in there and he’ll be evil and angry and mindless normies will cheer. Or you make a film about Eddie as the protagonist and show him struggling to control his hatred while Spider-Man thwarts his every attempt to destroy him... Yawn. I can see that being the more likely scenario here though, as I doubt you want to remind people of that middle finger Rami gave you in the middle of that third movie.

2. This is the first Venom themed movie within the MCU and it solely focuses on Peter dealing with becoming an Ass-Hole while wearing it. With the next movie being Brock.

Yeah I know dream on. Sony is never going to turn down the amount of seats a Paul Rudd cameo would bring in from a trailer cameo. But it’s my rant so I will dream on.

1. This movie is an R rated one and done.

Yup. You really want to make a boring Eddie Brock movie about the terrifying and violent Venom. I’m sure if you did by some miracle decide not to utilize your partnership with Disney you would be doing this film just to be chasing after that R-Rated Fox money is making. No. Stop right there you dumbshits. Those movies are great and made a fuck-ton of money because they told character focused small isolated stories, and happened to deserve an R rating given their content. The rating didn’t dictate the story. It doesn’t have to here either. But if you really want to make a movie about Eddie, or even Flash (I would literally drop to my knees for you Lynton) then let talented writers, not these guys, make you a good script about those characters.  

Maybe even make it about both Eddie and Flash, be weird with it. Do something creative. Do the Godfather 2 thing of telling two parallel stories from two time periods. One where Eddie starts as a frustrated bodybuilder who just lost his job (Don’t worry you can make a Jean De-Wolff movie later.) Flash has just joined the military after becoming compelled to do good after Spidey saved his life. (You know showing the two opposites of how they interpreted Spider-Man’s influence on their lives. With one becoming inspired to do good and one to do evil.) Maybe even pace the film a bit slowly so that Brock doesn’t even get the suit until around the second Act, the same time that Flash loses his legs. Showing the tragedy of the evil doer getting easy access to power while the one who did something good with his life thinks he was punished for it, ya know. But by the end Eddie losses his a huge fight against Spider-Man, and the Government takes the venom suit. And maybe that could pair nicely with the film ending with Flash being recruited to a special project that could get him his legs back, and end the film with him stepping into the frame with new black legs as Agent venom. Then you kind of have one character’s arc of becoming a good man and despite some hardship was able to overcome it. While the other who focused on frustration and rage ends up behind bars for projecting his own issues and shortcomings on others. Ya know, like a story. 

Hell it really doesn’t even have to be R rated. Plus an R rating kind of contradicts the monetizable nature of the character since it’s an easy sell to children. I just want a cool story with some kind of focus on character. But you won’t do that. The second option here is more likely if you don’t go MCU.

And it’s through here that you’ll desperately try to create your own Giant franchise money making machine. It won’t matter what the films are rated or what the stories are. As long as they follow the traditional Super-hero structure and feature characters people recognize. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if this first move you do has Kasady as the villain Venom has to beat. Because that whole (Mirrored Characters thing) won’t be tiresome at all. Hell that’s what has a lot of people divided on a certain character in Logan. (BTW I liked that, and yeah I’m a hypocrite.) But if you do make Carnage the villain, you might as well pay homage to Carnage USA.