Why ‘Venom’ Feels Like a Throwback to an Earlier Era

Author: Richard Newby / Source: The Hollywood Reporter

“The world has enough superheroes,” notes the tagline in the latest trailer for Venom, and Sony is surely hoping audiences will agree and embrace its toothy antihero come October. Venom received a warm reception at this month’s San Diego Comic-Con, leaving many fans eagerly anticipating the release of the trailer online.

There’s a lot riding on the success of Ruben Fleischer’s Venom. The first film in Sony’s planned shared universe, Venom will test audience’s reception to supporting Spider-Man characters, without the titular webslinger joining the fray. Although separate from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Venom may have all the more chance to break out from the crowd of superhero shared universes, especially since it looks like that number of universes will grow smaller following 20th Century Fox’s decision to sell its film assets to Disney. If Venom can really manage to depart from the world-ending stakes of traditional superhero movies, and instead embrace the absurdist monster-movie aspects, then Sony may find itself with a universe unique enough to last.

Producer Avi Arad has long championed Venom, the result of which led to Sam Raimi’s reluctant inclusion of the character in Spider-Man 3 (2007). Noting the character’s appeal, Arad has claimed over the years that kids love Venom. While that may have been true in the 1990s and early 2000s, the character’s appeal, particularly the Eddie Brock iteration, has dwindled somewhat in recent years. Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman’s recent comic book relaunch has become one of Marvel’s best-selling titles and rejuvenated interest in Eddie Brock as Venom, at least among adult fans.

And therein lies the interesting route Sony seems to taking with Venom. Despite Arad’s “for the kids” sales pitch, the latest trailer for the film clearly seems to be tapping its adult fanbase. After all, they’re the ones seen sporting Venom tattoos and who left the character intertwined with the metal and grunge scene of the ’90s.

This doesn’t mean that kids and teenagers won’t jump on board. Fox had a similar situation on its hands with Deadpool, and now he’s a household name. But there’s a distinctive dated feel to the look and tone of the film that feels like an intentional throwback to a simpler time of comic book movies when they weren’t the linchpin of pop culture or expected to make a billion dollars. Venom looks cool in the way that riding a motorcycle looks cool, rather than the way in which building a mechanical suit that seamlessly reacts to your every impulse, and can fly, looks cool. In other words, Venom looks pre-Iron Man cool. The pic may prove to distinguish itself from the splashy superhero movies of the MCU and mythic nature of DC’s shared universe by presenting itself as a working-class monster movie given credibility by an A-list cast.

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