I wasn't going to watch Venom, but some friends who's judgment I trust gave me a nudge. I was never really "into" the character in the comics, and the Sony Marvel movies have been honestly hit and miss. One of the early trailers left me wondering "Which movie is that supposed to be, again?"
One of the things circulating in the pre-release buzz was that the writers (One of whom is Jewish and the other sure looks that way) saw the relationship between Eddie and Venom as a romance.
This approach created something that is seldom seen in the comics: Character development for Venom.
Venom was shown not as a "suit" but as a character in "his" (Symbiote gender is questionable to me) own right, who changes his opinions on things over the course of the movie. They made Venom a person.
And I'll be honest, this exchange:
"What really made you change your mind?"
"You"
...how much more romantic can you get. So the first lesson of Venom: You can have a romance that is not about sex or mating. This is something I've long held. A really good friendship narrative can be just as strong as a "traditional" romance. (Nothing wrong with traditional romances and I'm not above writing them myself when I feel like it). The romance between Eddie and Venom is counterpointed by the "anti-romance" between Eddie and Anne...the breakup story and its aftermath.
So, to the second part of my title.
Colonialism.
I semi-joked to Greg afterwards that Venom has essentially the same plot as Dances With Wolves.
Guy from superior culture travels to primitive culture. He falls in love with a native, switches sides, and decides to protect these people.
It's...essentially the same story. And that's another thing that, if realized, could make some people uncomfortable with this movie. It presents our highest technology (The bad guys use drones in a way I haven't seen in any movie, although I admit I've missed some of the recent technothrillers), it actually has a "day after tomorrow" feel with manned rockets intercepting comics...
...and then says "These guys have you beat. These guys are going to colonize you. Not just your land, either, but your bodies. And if you fight it you're going to die."
"That's a higher being."
And Venom calling Eddie his "ride" at the start. Venom sees Eddie, at the start, the way I see a horse...something you look after and treat well, but you would never think of as an equal.
Then he realizes Eddie is his equal. "We're both losers." Maybe that's not the most positive way of putting it. But Venom's character development is "These are people and we can't just invade them."
And all of this in a movie the critics have been panning. It has a rotten tomatoes of 31%, but the bad reviews include fans pissed off about the lack of a connection to Spider-Man - which is probably a result of those ongoing rights battles, but which also allowed Venom to be introduced right away as a much-more-interesting antihero. At the same time, most of the fans liked it. If you take only audience reviews, it jumps to 89%, although of course that might be people mad with the critics. Screenrant has the right of it: The critics didn't realize the movie is supposed to be campy, is supposed to leaven its serious themes with a nice dose of humor.
And the one rating that really matters is positive: Venom topped the box office for its first two weeks.
A couple more notes on the movie: Riz Ahmed does bad very well, but I'm starting to experience some fatigue with bad guys who are "Just trying to save us from global warming." This includes the new motivation for Thanos. The Champions comic book just did it too. Can we please stop? By framing wanting to do something about global warming as a villainous motivation, we only support those who don't want to do anything to protect the environment at all...
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