Months after Venom: The Last Dance brought Tom Hardy’s Venom franchise to a close, the iconic Marvel character’s co-creator has offered his thoughts on how he would have approached the movies differently.
Talking to CBR, Todd MacFarlane shared his thoughts on how Hardy’s version of the character evolved away from his original vision for the character:
“… If you’re asking the basic question, would I have written and directed exactly like they did? Of course not, right? …To me, Venom’s not a good guy. Like in my brain. They turned Venom into kind of a good guy after I left, Marvel, right? So in my mind… he was a villain, and then I left… It was when I had my back turned that all of a sudden, I was like, ‘What do you talk about?’ Venom’s a good guy. And so I think my tendencies are always to go sort of dark and serious.”
Those comments echo wider sentiments about the Sony Spider-Man Universe of movies, which focused on the web-head’s stable of villains and supporting characters (in the case of Madame Web). Removing Spider-Man from those movies led to an inevitable trend of turning beloved villains like Venom, Kraven, and yes, even Morbius, into anti-heroes, when a signficiant portion of the audience wanted full-blooded villainy.
MacFarlane also confirmed exactly why Sony made Venom a hero. It was an attempt to broaden out the audience and the box office appeal:
“I would have Venom… would have been an R rated movie. if they had said, ‘Todd, putting you in charge.’ But nobody asked. So that’s okay. Yeah, they try to make them very relatable… Everybody has a business and they’re trying to do the best they can [with] their businesses, and they want to have as broad an audience as possible, right?”
The co-creator also talked about how his other most famous character, Spawn, lent to dark adaptations broadly, and you get a sense of what a Venom franchise in his image might have looked like:
“I just think, because of the nature of my character Spawn, I think the vast majority of people are adult and want something adult, like, yeah, you know. And so I’m not trying to sell toys or T-shirts or hats. I’m just, I want to do a cool movie and so, but other public companies have different agendas, so that’s okay. It’s their property. They get to do what they see fit, just like I wake up every day and do what I think is best for my company. And sometimes you’re right and sometimes you won’t.”
There’s no denying the success of the original Venom, or the spirit of fun the franchise embraced, but the lack of Spider-Man forced Venom into a more heroic position than was optimal. Though, as MacFarlane says, Marvel evolved the character into an anti-hero in the comics, his starting point was as a villain opposite Spider-Man, and because of the separation of the movie universes, we were forced to skip that important dynamic entirely.
Modern Hollywood has shown an often frustrating obsession with humanizing villains – which it’s difficult not to trace back to the Star Wars prequel trilogy – and making bad guys relatable comes at a cost. Joker: Folie à Deux might well be seen by some as the zenith of that trend – and testament to the need to change it – but I can’t help but feel we’ll continue to see it for a while. What I know for certain is that the next time I see Venom, ideally in the MCU, I want to see a villainous symbiote (and all it would take it a different, more morally corrupt host). But then again, the arrival of Knull in Venom: The Last Dance, and the suggestion of a symbiote war makes even that feel unlikely.
-
Venom
- Release Date
-
September 16, 2005
- Runtime
-
85 minutes
- Director
-
Jim Gillespie
- Writers
-
Brandon Boyce, Flint Dille
- Producers
-
Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Karen Lauder, Kevin Williamson
-
Agnes Bruckner
Eden Sinclair
-
-
-
-
Venom: Let There Be Carnage
5/10
- Release Date
-
October 1, 2021
- Runtime
-
97 minutes
-
-
Woody Harrelson
Cletus Kasady/Carnage
-
Venom: The Last Dance
7/10
- Release Date
-
October 25, 2024
- Runtime
-
110 Minutes
- Director
-
Kelly Marcel
Source: CBR