How to Fix Venom

Official movie poster for "Venom."

Credit: Sony

It wasn’t until I got about halfway through watching Venom on Friday night that it finally hit me. I figured out how to make Venom the great, dark, antihero movie everyone hoped it would be. It happened when Eddie Brock calls the symbiote, Venom, a parasite, something Venom immediately takes offense to. That was when I made a connection that had been tickling around my brain for a while but I couldn’t put my finger on until that moment.

Like it or not, Venom, you are a parasite. And I think that if the writers of Venom had done a little more research, they could have created a story that landed a lot better with critics and audiences. As of now Venom holds a 31% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 182 reviews. Enthusiasm going into the film has been lukewarm at best. Having seen it, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t half bad. The interactions between Eddie and Venom carry the film amid a handful of one-dimensional characters. The plot is fairly straightforward, but it misses some key opportunities to really make audiences consider what it means to share your body with someone else who doesn’t have the same moral code that you do. If the people at Sony wish to make improvements to a Venom sequel, I suggest that they introduce themselves to the manga and anime series called Parasyte for some inspiration.

Parasyte is a science fiction horror manga written and illustrated by Hitoshi Iwaaki from 1988 to 1995. It was adapted into an anime titled Parasyte -the maxim- and aired between October 2014 and March 2015 in Japan. Parasyte centers on a male high school student named Shinichi Izumi. One day, dozens of worm like creatures appear on Earth and take over the brains of humans. One attempts to enter Shinichi, but is stopped before it can reach his brain. Instead the parasite takes over Shinichi’s right hand. Because Shinichi’s brain is still intact, the two retain their separate personalities. Shinichi and the parasite, which he names Migi, form a strong bond as they work together to survive the parasite invasion.

Shinichi and Migi ready to fight in a scene from 

the opening credits for "Parasyte -the maxim"

Venom opens up with the discovery of a comet covered in symbiotic lifeforms. A spacecraft operated by the Life Foundation brings four of the symbiotes back to Earth, although one symbiote escapes during a crash landing. The Life Foundation’s CEO, Carlton Drake, hopes to bond humans with symbiotes to prepare for what he believes to be Earth’s inevitable ecological destruction. It’s one of the more heavy-handed subplots of the film, and a lot of the film’s complexity would have been removed if the symbiotes simply arrived on Earth the same way the parasites do. It is implied that the parasites’ presence on Earth is the result of some higher power wishing to put a check on humanity’s destructive actions. In fact, Venom explains to Eddie that the comet carrying the symbiotes is an invasion force searching for worlds where the symbiotes can possess and devour the inhabitants. Sony should have just stuck by that storyline to give the symbiotes a larger role in the film as characters rather than just tools in another human’s scheme.

Eddie Brock enters the story as an investigative reporter looking into the Life Foundation’s human-symbiote experiments and ends up being exposed to Venom. I said before that the heart and soul of Venom is the interactions between Eddie and Venom once they are bonded. However, some simple changes could have made their dynamic much more interesting. We don’t know to what extent Eddie is involved in Venom’s homicidal actions throughout the film. Is Eddie himself actually eating people, or is Venom in charge the whole time? Shinichi has several inner monologues with himself during his fights with other parasites, a common trope in anime. I would like to know what going through Eddie’s mind when Venom appears to be calling the shots.

Venom and Eddie (left); and Migi and Shinichi (right) take some time to bond.

Furthermore, it would have been nice to learn more about Venom as a character. When Venom teaches Eddie about the symbiotes and their mission, he offers to spare Eddie if Eddie agrees to help Venom destroy humanity. We find out that while this is happening, the missing symbiote manages to bond with Drake and convince Drake to do the same thing. Drake and his symbiote attempt to launch another spacecraft and return to Earth with the rest of the symbiote invasion force. They are stopped by Eddie and Venom after Venom has a change of heart due to his experiences being a part of Eddie’s life.

The problem is that Venom’s character shift just doesn’t feel organic, and is only explained in a handful of lines. In Parasyte, Migi is first shown to have a low opinion of humanity and even threatens to incapacitate Shinichi and kill Shinichi’s friends if it means protecting his own life. However, after fusing himself with Shinichi after Shinichi is mortally wounded by another parasite, Migi begins to gain more human-like traits and makes decisions based on emotions rather than logic. We see this during fight scenes as well as one-on-one conversations with Shinichi.

Shinichi on the other hand becomes more distant and unsympathetic after fusing with Migi. He begins to think less like a human and more like a parasite. This is in stark contrast to Eddie who doesn’t really change throughout Venom. He starts as an altruistic reporter looking to expose injustice and ends as a superhero killing criminals with Venom’s help. At no point is Eddie put through a moral dilemma that challenges everything he thought he knew about the world.

Left: A parasite prepares to eat a human. Right: Venom is about to deliver some justice to a crook.

This is perhaps the biggest failing of Venom. It misses the opportunity to examine deep philosophical and ethical questions that get far better treatment in Parasyte. Shinichi’s opinion of the parasites changes dramatically over the course of the series. He initially considers them to be monsters, particularly after his mother and friends are killed by parasites. Migi, however, points out that the parasites are only doing what is necessary to survive. He asks Shinichi if parasites killing one species is worse than humans killing multiple species. Encounters with humans and parasites who challenge Shinichi’s prejudices leave him wondering who the real monsters are by the time the series ends.

For the most part, Venom feels like a movie from another time. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have long since moved the game and raised the standards for comic book movies. Audiences now expect more than flashy fight scenes and snarky one-liners, and the numbers speak for themselves. Superhero movies with genuine heart have proven very successful with critics and at the box office. I highly recommend that Sony gives Parasyte a look over to help get their next film on the right track.