There is no one else alive better suited to play Venom than Tom Hardy.
Look, I was not a big fan of Spider-Man 3, granted I am not one of those people who claims it doesn’t exist. Superman IV: The Quest For Peace on the other hand belongs in that unmarked grave where they dumped all the Atari E.T. game cartridges. And much like the aforementioned candy munching giraffe-necked Jedi, it should stay stuck in a hole, unable to ever pull off the impossible joystick combination to escape.
But back to Spider-Man 3, my biggest gripe was Venom: who they had play him; how he was portrayed; and how he was defeated and thrown away as a nothing, a mere afterthought. The most common criticism of Spider-Man 3 is always that it had too many villains. I don’t disagree.
Now we are getting a stand-alone villain movie, or maybe villain isn’t the right term for Venom. As my comic book expert reminded me, Marvel tends to be more loose and free with their characters’ moral alignments. It’s not uncommon for a villain to be a savior or for a hero to do dirty deeds . . . looking at you Deadpool.
For the uninitiated, Venom is the dark side of Spider-Man, depending on the origin story they use, Spider-Man’s “black suit” (which is actually its own entity) transforms the already psychotic Eddie Brock into a lethal wall-crawling terror. Where I think Venom will have its challenges is where, ironically, all super-hero movies face struggles – the villain. Who will Eddie be sparring with, if it is just himself that can get old in a hurry.
But, given the possibilities with this character, Sony can make some bold choices and give us something special. We shall see in October!
