Boromir lives AU where instead of being around for the events of Two Towers and ROTK he just kind of shows up in Minas Tirith after the Ring is destroyed all bloody & bedraggled like ‘you GUYS i had to swim all the way back what the hELL’
Aragorn: *watching Boromir’s funeral boat drift away* you checked for a pulse right Legolas
Legolas, who definitely does not know how human pulses work: sure did!!
Active voice: I will write
Passive voice: Writing will be done
Passive-aggressive voice: I love how you always say you’ll write but never dome @ me
ron: hi charlie. how are you? i am fine. my friends have an illegal dragon and we need it to go somewhere safe and also secret so we don’t get in trouble. don’t tell mum.
unsung hero of venom 2018: doctor dan lewis
the man who for once, in the entire history of movie boyfriends, does not give a shit that his girlfriend is within 100 yards of her ex, only that her ex is very ill and needs some tender loving care because wtf is that black space blob
yet more venom things
I know I and other people have riffed on this in other places, but I think it needs its own post.
If Eddie Brock has one problem in the first act of the movie, it’s impulse control. He does dumb shit without thinking about the consequences. It fucks up his career, his girlfriend’s career, their relationship…pretty much every aspect of his life that we see going well in the opening minutes of the movie.
The whole first act of the movie, people (including the audience) are like, Eddie, for the love of jeebus, please do not do the thing. Even when doing the thing comes from a good impulse, like trying to rescue someone you know from a weird creepy lab…Eddie, you didn’t really think that one through, did you?
Enter the Venom symbiote. What is Venom? A bunch of impulses. Hungry? Chomp some heads! Doesn’t matter whose! Want up? Climb the thing! Tree, building, doesn’t matter! Threatened? Defend yourself and your host! Who cares what gets smashed along the way?
So you’re taking the protagonist’s main problem, magnifying it, and making it a character. Which is a great way to externalize and literalize someone’s internal conflict. And now Eddie’s the one who has to argue–with someone much more powerful than he is–not to do the thing, and explain why we should not do the thing, that it would be bad, that it has consequences. And if you follow this metaphor, the resolution of the movie is learning how to be in balance with your impulses. Which doesn’t mean squashing them down completely. It means knowing when they’re useful, even life-saving, and when they’re destructive and need to be reined in.
For a movie that has some pacing problems and clearly was cut all to hell, this is actually a pretty solid narrative arc. Like, on a basic story structure level, it holds together, and is a lot cleaner and neater than some of the structurally clunky blockbusters that have come out recently. (I’m looking at you, several recent Star Wars movies that are 40 minutes too long.) I think there are places where the scene-level editing could’ve been improved to make certain character beats clearer or land with more impact, but by the standards of current studio filmmaking this is…not a bad movie, on a storytelling level, and I’m starting to think lots of critics just didn’t bother trying to understand what it was, when it wasn’t what they expected from the marketing.
I am dying as I think about how low-key powerful it was to switch up Venom’s MO for the movie. I love Comic Venom: they’re just a pile of slime that wants a friend/partner/Love and to Do A Good Job (which incidentally leads to a whole lot of bloody mess, but hey, they’re trying to help). But Movie Venom?
For the majority of the film we see this asshole 1) Hijacking some poor dude’s free will and entire body, 2) Eating people and thereby forcing the same poor bastard to eat people, 3) Helping his alien supervisor plot the invasion and/or consumption of the whole goddamn Earth, and 4) Taking stealth nibbles out of his host’s organs between meals–granted, with the intent of spackling shit back together once he’d finally realized he liked/loved/wanted-to-marry the guy, but still
By the time Anne MRI’s him out of Eddie’s system, anyone who didn’t know better–and frankly, folks who were already Comic Venom fans–saw that Movie Venom had proven himself to be a dick and a half. Movie Venom does whatever the fuck he feels like, working on pure impulse 25/7, no sugarcoated sweetheart symbiote to be seen. Which brings us to the scene in the woods.
With Anne. And the kiss. And returning to Eddie like a shot. And telling Eddie his mind was changed, he’s all for saving the Earth, fuck Riot, we’re all good now, Honest and For Real
So think about this. He bonds with Anne–apparently another perfectly compatible host–and doesn’t immediately run off with her to join Riot. (No longer thinking just about the mission)
Steers her straight back to Eddie. Kills goons. Does that good symbiosis make out session. (Now showing he’s very specifically, very explicitly, into Eddie)
He claims that he wants to stay on Earth/protect it because he’s Cool ™ here, humanity’s great, rah rah. Eddie calls bullshit. Venom admits the obvious–I’m here for you, Eddie~–and then they rush to the rocket. Now think back.
Think about the Venom who said, “We have no secrets,” and then proceeded to wait until the last possible second to mention, oh, ha, funny thing, I was actually planning to help my boss feed your whole planet to my species, my bad
Think about the Venom who conveniently forgot to mention he’d been gnawing on Eddie’s innards and tried to murder the man who brought it to Eddie’s attention before he could fix it–the symbiote equivalent of sweeping a mess under the rug before Mom finds out
Think about the Venom who proved over and over throughout the film that he was 110% in control of Eddie’s body, Heroic Willpower Does Not Apply, and, upon realizing he wanted to be bonded with Eddie for keeps, could still have very easily marched that man, screaming and kicking, into the rocket anyway. It would have been nothing. It would mean following orders. It would mean keeping to the mission and offering up a new world to his species. And he would still have had Eddie with him, whether Eddie liked it or not
But he doesn’t do it.
Eddie was right to call bullshit on him suddenly falling in like with the human race–who does Venom know besides Eddie and Anne?–but Venom still, for the first time in the film, does something self-sacrificing. He goes against the grain of what would be easiest, what would be most beneficial to him, and fights Riot. Knowing he could die. He does throw himself into the (literal) line of fire to save Eddie from the explosion, accepting the 99% chance that it will kill him.
It’s at this point–the twofold move of betraying his world and sacrificing himself for Eddie–that the seeds of a conscience and the potential for something like a hero are planted.
Venom did the hard thing. Venom did the moral thing. Venom didn’t just do ‘whatever he wants.’ Because of Eddie. Because Eddie was mad at him, hurt by him, and way back in the MRI room, that hit the pile of space sludge like a brick. Because as it turns out, he doesn’t want to just ‘have’ Eddie. He’s in love with Eddie. And having the person you’re in love with pissed at you fucking sucks.
So Venom did the math.
Get Eddie Back + Take Over World = Eddie is Sad/Mad/Will Never Forgive Me
Get Eddie Back + Save World = Eddie Forgives Me
But then there was the impalement:
Eddie’s Dead = Fuck That Noise Entirely
Followed by the explosion:
Eddie Shielded from Fire =
I’ll Probably Burn to DeathEddie Lives = Good = Goodbye, EddieWhich is all a very roundabout way of saying: Movie Venom, known asshole, completely overhauled his core of pure organic assholedom just so Eddie would not only live, but would live to not be upset at him anymore.
So it all kind of makes me laugh when I see versions of these two where Venom is still the 25/7 Dick © to Eddie he was in the first part of the film. Like, I get the playful bickering stuff, but let’s be honest
Eddie: -expresses 0.000002 ounces of displeasure with anything-
Venom: WHAT DID I DO I CAN FIX IT WHO DO I HAVE TO FIGHT
Theory A: The majority of the Venom cast are, in fact, hardcore morosexual and Eddie Brock is the supplest slice of heartfelt idiot they’ve ever laid eyes on
Anne? 110% down to marry Eddie despite and/or because of him being the human epitome of a gold-plated trashbag
Doctor Dan? Big fan of his writing, maybe they could all sit down to a ritzy lobster lunch and do some beta readings–oh, oh no, okay, lobsters are a no go, how about just saving the crazy dumbass from an arrest and giving him some All Free medical treatment instead, call me you glorious moron
VENOM? Where do we start with fucking Venom?? 2 days’ worth of roosting in that perfect, sweat-stained, I-Will-Kick-Every-Douchebag-Hornet’s-Nest-I-Can-Find, tire fire of a brain, and he’s flipping his entire species the bird while Frenching his new wonderfully, chronically, incurably confused husband
Theory B: Eddie Brock is some kind of low grade incubus who bewitches anyone he spends more than ten minutes with into becoming a morosexual, at which point his natural state of seductive dumbassity takes over
the critics saying Tom Hardy is “over-acting” in Venom are just used to superhero movie protagonists being stoic and silent and don’t know what to do with an actor who actually makes his characters express emotions in healthy ways lmao
(mild spoilers ahead) When Eddie’s sad he looks miserable and teary and openly expresses why. He shrieks when he’s startled. He panics when he’s confused and worried. He silently screams when he’s angry and can’t do anything about it. He reacts to the events of the movie in a way that someone might actually respond.
Critics are just so used to machismo in their superhero movies that they don’t know what to do in the absence of it.
point being: Venom was fucking good and the critics are wrong
unsung hero of venom 2018: doctor dan lewis
the man who for once, in the entire history of movie boyfriends, does not give a shit that his girlfriend is within 100 yards of her ex, only that her ex is very ill and needs some tender loving care because wtf is that black space blob
THIS! And even at some point when Anne started to launch into explanations of ‘I swtg nothing is going on between me and Eddie’ he was quick to be like ‘that’s not even an issue. the issue is that he’s about to die and we need to find him????’ At no point was he ever jealous or possessive and he was always very kind and nice to Eddie because he feels secure in his relationship with Anne and trusts her.
moar ways to hold hands with ur alien: a prequel/sequel/companion to this piece (which i seriously never expected to be so well-received and i’m still kinda reeling??). +some bonus doodles under the cut.
Listen, yes of course Eddie Brock is an exceptional example of an alien fucker but I need everyone to understand that the symbiote is canonically from a planet where not only does everything reproduce asexually but the even idea of wanting any kind of relationship with a host was considered so insane and devious that the Venom symbiote was sentenced to death for it. And consider how weird a human must be to them. Humans are as much aliens to symbiotes as symbiotes are to humans.
What I’m saying is in terms of being an alien fucker, NOBODY beats the Venom Symbiote.
I have identified the song that perfectly matches the energy of the Venom movie and it is the vocals of “Head Like a Hole” backed by the Lisa-Frank-in-sound-form bubbly pop instrumentation of “Call Me Maybe.”
TRYING TO BE DARK AND EDGY AND ANGRY but the essential! rom com! nature! just keeps breaking through!!
eddie brock is a millennial
• unemployed
• anxiety
• big issues w big pharma
• alien fucker
• everyone is constantly pleading w him to get some sleep
• doctors r begging him to go to a hospital
• alien possesses him & ends up actually improving his quality of life
• nothing in freezer but chicken nuggets
• knows security guard is just doing his job, understandable, have a nice day
• talks 2 self in inappropriate situations
