While he’s very much taken on a life of his own in the comics, many will still think of Venom’s title character first and foremost as one of Peter Parker’s greatest adversaries, raising the question of how Eddie Brock and his symbiote alter ego plan to hold our attention when they don’t have a web-slinger to fight.
Well, for one thing, they can bring us a darker, more gruesome spectacle than you’d ever expect from your average Spidey flick. Director Ruben Fleischer has explained that the tone of the upcoming movie won’t be quite like that of any other current superhero franchise, saying:
“I’m a huge fan of comic book movies so I just tried to pick a lane that was true to the character. I think inherent to the character, he’s just darker, and we talked about more violent. It’s just tonally different from everything else, especially when you’re focusing on just Venom. He’s not a sunshine kind of guy. So, it takes place at night. It’s darker. More menacing. I think that within the spectrum of all these movies, there’s the DC super dark, Zack Snyder type version and then there’s the Marvel movies and I like to think that we’re in our own zone apart from that.”
Of course, if all goes well with Venom, it seems inevitable that Eddie will some day run into his famed nemesis, in which case, Fleischer would be totally game for a smackdown.
“I think we can all agree it would be pretty amazing to see Spider-Man and Venom face off in a film. I have to think that the studio is thinking the same way and at some point down the road they’re gonna run across each other’s paths.”
Until then, it looks like Venom will be finding plenty of disturbing ways to fill his time, with the director stating:
“Our movie wants to honor the comics as close as we can tonally. In the comics, he bites people’s heads off and eats brains. It would be weird to make a movie with Venom if he wasn’t doing that. We tried to honor it as closely as possible. This is definitely a darker, more violent, more vicious Marvel character than I think anyone’s ever seen before.”
From the sounds it, younger fans might have a hard time getting into the theater for this one, but for the rest of us, Venom will be viewable from October 5th.