10 things to know about the venom movie.

Venom Movie: 10 Reasons To Be Excited

It's Venom not as you know it. But is that necessarily a bad thing?

Sony/Marvel Comics

Venom's trailer might've released to a frosty reception, with the Symbiote itself nowhere to be seen, but it was far from the disaster fans had deemed it to be right off the bat.

Sony haven't been able to boast a good track record when it comes to the superhero genre for well over a decade now, but they are due a comeback. Relinquishing control of the Spidey license to Marvel was a good first step, and with Venom, they have the potential to make the Spidey license their own.

It's all come out of nowhere, granted, but the film (set to release this October), boasts a formidable cast. Tom Hardy has all the tools to make this Eddie Brock one to remember, Michelle Williams elevates the whole production altogether just by being in it, and Riz Ahmed's anonymous antagonist is sure to lend the film an edge as well.

The odds are very much stacked against it, but if you scratch beneath the surface, there might actually be a fair few reasons to love Sony’s superhero horror - even if it hasn’t quite managed to win over everyone just yet.

10. It's Meant To Be Fun

Marvel Comics

While there's no fixed criteria all comic book films have to meet, it makes sense to depict certain types of characters in a fun light. Venom might not necessarily look like one of those characters, but he's still a product of the nineties, a decade in which Marvel quite literally did not care.

Everything about Venom's design harkens back to a time where Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld reigned supreme, and while that's not a bad thing per se, back when the pair were prominent Marvel creators, the focus was less on nuance and subtlety, and more on high-concept artwork and dark storytelling. Spider-Man's darker, less conventional storylines during McFarlane's reign felt particularly contrived, but there's a kind of enjoyable irreverence to it, much like Venom's OG comics themselves.

At the end of the day, Eddie Brock is a product of that decade. He's been elevated through subsequent storylines and by writers not of that earlier milieu, but everything about the character, from his name to his design, is of a time that valued style over substance. Venom today boasts both in spades, but there should be something in the film that appeals to the character's OG fans.

And it will, supposedly. While the film will be a horror, it's also said to have plenty of "pop and fun". Yippee.

9. Plans For A Franchise

Marvel Comics

Eddie Brock might be the most popular incarnation of the Venom character, but he's by no means the only one.

Since the Symbiote's arrival on the scene in 1984, no less than nine separate characters have donned it. Peter Parker was the first, then came Eddie, and after him came Mac Gargan (the original Scorpion), and later Flash Thomson too. The latter's stint under the Symbiote was notable for plenty of reasons, not least of which because Flash, then a veteran of the Iraq War, takes on the suit willingly as part of a government program in an attempt to live up to his childhood icon, Spider-Man.

This isn't to say that Sony will definitely head down that path, but it wouldn't be difficult to envisage the studio looking to these later storylines in order to maximise the character's franchise potential. That means retaining Hardy in the lead, but with those MCU links still yet to be determined, what form it'll take is still up in the air.

The character's bibliography might be lacking, but with Hardy at the forefront, the potential is there for all to see.

8. Tom Hardy As Eddie Brock

Sony/IGN

Tom Hardy might be a bit of a franchise actor these days, but even so, his appearance in Venom is cause for excitement.

He's embarked on the Fury Road as Mad Max, torn down Gotham City as a muzzled terrorist and made appearances on TV in Taboo and Peaky Blinders. Point being, he's pretty much everywhere right now, and while it might seem as though the actor is spreading himself a little thin, he's actually the perfect choice to play Eddie Brock.

Brock, contrary to his depiction in the Spidey show literally everyone watched in the nineties, was something of a conflicted figure in the comics. He was a once lauded journalist whose eventual humiliation only came when he covered the infamous murder of Jean DeWolff for the Daily Globe. Confident he'd found the culprit responsible, it later transpired that he'd extracted the confession from a crackpot, a humiliation made complete when Spider-Man unmasked the person in question a few days later.

It's unclear what kind of baggage Hardy's Brock will carry into the film, but expect him to capture both the confidence and insecurity of the title character with ease. If the teaser was anything to go by, he'll be the most convincing thing about it.

7. A Superhero Horror Film

Marvel Comics

R-rated superhero films aren't a new phenomenon, but their sudden increase (and success) has provided new opportunities to different studios working in that genre.

Deadpool and Logan, the two most recent and critically lauded 'R' comic book features, have opened the floodgates for these kinds of films. And Venom, a character tailor-made for this kind of style, is set to benefit.

The most interesting thing about Venom's production hasn't just been how much it's flown beneath the radar, but also the comments from the film's producers. Back in July, the president of Columbia Pictures - Sanford Panitch - said that the Venom film would be gunning for a horror-like tone, inspired by the filmographies of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg. The difference, Panitch went on to say, was that Venom would have "pop and fun", but to many, the comparisons to Carpenter and Cronenberg will inevitably stick out the most.

Both Hellboy and Blade have straddled the line between horror and hero, but without the freedom of an R-rating. Neil Marshall's Hellboy reboot will be the next to tread down this path, but for now, it looks like Venom's leading the way.

6. Its Use Of Source-Material

Marvel Comics

Until now, it's been a rare thing to see creators actively cite individual story-arcs when promoting a given comic book film. Even Captain America: Civil War, which was plainly based on the popular, if not ultimately inferior Mark Millar comic, never explicitly addressed that storyline specifically.

And yet, for some reason or another, Venom's creators are doing the exact opposite. In fact they've been quite explicit about the whole thing, citing David Michelinie's Lethal Protector storyline as being the film's main source of inspiration. There are both positives and negatives to glean from this approach, as adaptations should really be doing just that - adapting things - but it's refreshing to see filmmakers promote the comics that they've used to create their own story, certainly in the way Venom's done until now.

Comic book writers always seem to get the short end of the stick when it comes to adaptations, with work-for-hire contracts placing ownership squarely with the publishers they've worked for, so to receive at least some publicity prior to the release of a film that, for all intents and purposes, could owe its success to them, is a more than welcome change.

For the film itself however, it raises another question. Will Lethal Protector be the sole inspiration for Venom? One would hope not, as these adaptations tend to work best when an entire bibliography is taken into consideration, but there's nothing to say that Venom won't carve its own destiny come October.

5. Seeing The Symbiote

Sony

Backlash to the new Venom teaser came because it didn't show off the Symbiote proper, but apart from the fact that it was a smart decision on Sony's behalf (why show off the monster in a first look?), it's also clear that, with the film leaning on the source-material so heavily, Venom is going to look like Venom.

That might sound like the bare minimum, but remember, Topher Grace's Brock still manages to linger even eleven years on from his debut, and he was the most un-Venom like thing ever.

It's unclear how Ruben Fleishcer's film will depict the title character onscreen, with a mixture of practical and computer-generated effects a likely choice, but fans won't pass on the opportunity to see a more faithful Symbiote regardless.

At the end of the day, the Venom film is still going to have Venom. He's both the hero and monster of the flick though, and to give that away early on wouldn't make that much sense at all.

4. Carnage

Marvel

Although the Lethal Protector arc from the comics never actually featured Carnage, with the Symbiotes of Phage, Agony, Slasher, Scream and Riot (this was the nineties, remember), all appearing instead.

A change might be in order for the film however. Neither one of those five were particularly threatening, or interesting, when they debuted, and while it's clear the Fleischer film has been hyping that arc up quite a bit, a better, more recognisable symbiote could be making an appearance in their stead.

That's because a since deleted Instagram post by Tom Hardy featured a drawing of Carnage looming over a Brock who looked just like the actor himself. It's unclear who drew the picture, but the fact that Hardy deleted it, as well as the fact it featured the actor's likeness, would seemingly confirm that Carnage could be coming.

In the comics, Cletus Kasady is a pretty terrifying character. He's the spawn of the Venom Symbiote and a psycho killer (qu'est-ce que c'est) in every sense of the word. He's also the perfect villain for the Venom film, so if Fleischer et. al. were to lower the Symbiote quota for the film, Carnage would make up for it and then some.

3. The Supporting Cast

Sony

Michelle Williams is one of the best actors going, so the fact she's trying her hand at a comic book film is more than enough reason to be excited for Venom.

A lead in Brokeback Mountain, Shutter Island and more recently All the Money in the World, Williams is a proven talent and one that elevates the film just by her presence alone. As for her role, she'll be playing a character called Ann Weying, Brock's onetime love and later Symbiote host herself. With the film holding such a reverence for the source-material, it would appear as though all of this will still be the case come October, with the potential for Weying to don a Symbiote of her own to set up a future film afterwards there as well.

Williams is also joined by Riz Ahmed (in what looks to be a villainous role), and that too is brilliant on its own. His performance as pilot Bodhi Rook in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a key highlight of that film, and with another franchise to his name, Venom looks to be yet another stepping stone in the actor's path to mainstream recognition, following a critically lauded bout in 2014's Nightcrawler.

2. Links To The MCU

Marvel Comics

The hot topic of conversation throughout Venom's long and fraught journey to, y'know, actually being a thing, was whether or not it'd have any ties to the broader MCU. Sony struck a deal with Disney for Spider-Man of course, but with the studio developing their own films concurrently to Marvel's own, questions regarding their relationship to the MCU were inevitable.

It hasn't helped that the answers fans have gotten have been... contradictory, to say the least. One week, Venom and the rest of Sony's films were said to take place inside the MCU, the next, they weren't. Recent chatter has lent weight to the former interpretation over the latter, with Tom Holland supposedly due an appearance in Venom as Peter Parker, but the simple truth is no one will know until the film releases for real.

And, if Venom is situated within the MCU, it'll pose some really exciting questions for the franchise going forward. Each individual MCU entry has sported a different genre and feel, but apart from the Netflix TV shows themselves, none have ever delved into the kind of territory Venom inevitably will.

Having Venom in the MCU would make things feel a little bit more varied, and assuage fears that the MCU will 'Disney-fy' the X-Men's more mature tendencies. More important, however, is that it'll add yet another iconic Marvel character into the mix - something Spidey fans in particular are sure to appreciate.

1. ...Or The Lack Thereof

Marvel Comics

In the event that Venom isn't actually an MCU film (and it's a possibility everyone must consider), fans are likely to feel a tad frustrated. After all the 'will it, won't it' gossip and the noncommittal answers from both Marvel and Sony, making Venom a non-MCU feature is likely to feel anticlimactic to those that've been following its production closely.

It wouldn't kill the film dead though, and with Fox having long proven that Marvel's characters don't have to be in the MCU for things to work, having Venom be a self-contained story could work to its advantage. Shared universes can get stale after a while, and while there's no denying that fans are really rather privileged to see all their favourite characters share a screen together, the advent of the 'good' comic book film came long before these massive, inter-movie crossovers were popularised.

And then there's Deadpool and Logan, which both exceeded expectations and, in Logan's case, have actually clawed their way into Oscar contention. This isn't to say that the MCU affords less creative freedom to these kind of films (although there is evidence to support that theory), but equally, none of Disney's Marvel films have ventured out of PG-13 territory, nor do they have to.

Venom will have its own vibe irrespective of its setting, but if it were to take place outside of the MCU, it would only come at Disney's - and not the fans' - expense.

Are you excited for Venom? Still trying to forget about Topher Grace's Venom? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!