Venom Movie Production Begins, But Does Character Deserve Own Film?

The Venom stand-alone film is happening officially. Via Inverse, production kicked off a few days ago. Unfortunately, I feel like the only one who has zero interest in this movie.

There is exceptional talent involved with the project, from Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams and director Ruben Fleischer. But Venom, to me, has always been an inherently vapid character. The concept of a Byronic anti-hero that does “good,” but on his “own terms,” is passe.

Style over substance has never managed to impress me in the nerd world. I was never a Boba Fett guy and never cared for Spawn or Lobo. “Badasses” certainly have their place in the pop culture sphere, but I don’t know that that place is headlining a feature film. I guess Venom works as a sort of perversion of Spider-Man, but the foil doesn’t really go beyond aesthetics. Not that that matters because the geniuses over at The Sony flophouse have made it very clear that their Venom exists in a universe separate from the MCU’s Spider-Man.

It’s important to know that stories rarely live or die on Venom’s back. More often than not, Venom is a physical manifestation of evil, a compelling thing that projects what Spidey is going through inside.

Tom Hardy is not only a good actor, he also consistently chooses interesting projects. And if Hardy signed on for this project, then the script is, at the very least, not embarrassing. Tom Hardy will be using Mo-Cap for his Venom performance, so hopefully that will give way to a more impactful iteration of the alien than ever. We’ll just have to wait and see when this new Venom standalone movie hits theatres in October of next year.