May

3

Venom.

Filed Under Film | 7 Comments

Somehow, it escaped me until today that Spider-Man 3 features Topher Grace as Eddie Brock and Venom. Perhaps the presence of Venom partially explains why the third installment receiving significantly more mediocre reviews than its glorious predecessors. Perhaps something else is at work. But let me say at this point that although I’m certainly going to see Spider-Man 3, probably this weekend, and probably with a great deal of excitement and enjoyment, I am appalled about the Venom situation.

My concerns are twofold, and likely discussed to death by the fanboy community over the past few months. First, Topher Grace as Eddie Brock is, at least on the face of it, one of the most appalling casting mistakes I have ever noticed. While I can appreciate that Topher Grace has certain qualities, having Eddie Brock’s bodybuilder physique is not one of them. Ugh.

Second, by even having Venom as a character in the same film in which the black suit makes its first appearance is a textbook example of the producers biting off more than they can be comfortably chew. The suit ought to have had its initial run in 3, with Brock becoming seriously involved in the yet-to-be-filmed 4, and a Carnage storyline in 5. Duh.

Thoughts? Or am I so late that its laughable?


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7 Comments so far

  1. Jeff on May 3, 2007 9:41 pm

    No, I think you’re correct. While I think that Topher Grace is a good enough actor for the role he just ain’t Eddie Brock. Eddie Brock looks more like Dolph Lungren. He’s everything that Peter Parker is not: huge, menacing and driven. I don’t get that from any cast member from “That 70s Show”.

    We all know there will be a 4th at some point but I really hope they do a bit of a restart. Not totally from the beginning but just enough to go back a ways. I really like the four and five ideas you laid out I think that would be great. Of course, anything with Carnage would have to be rated R otherwise it just wouldn’t be the same.

    I’ll see it this weekend too but the reviews are so mixed. And the second film was quite possibly the best superhero movie ever (toss-up with X-Men 2). Oh well, I’m a goober I own the first two on DVD and I’ll buy the third.

  2. Euge on May 3, 2007 10:52 pm

    I thought Topher was a bad choice at first too but I read that they wanted to make him more like the darker side of Peter. He’s the person Peter could be if he didn’t have Uncle Ben. I do think the the movie looks overly saturated with villians ala the Batman movies. I like the idea of the suit being a plot point and not Venom. I like the idea of Spidey getting rid of the suit in the end leaving 4 open for some hardcore Venom action. And making the Sandman Uncle Ben’s real killer is really cheating the audience. Oh and how is Gwen Stacy going to fit into all this? There is sooo much story that can be told over numerous movies they could keep these things going on like the Bond movies for decades. Why shove so much into one little movie? Did Raimi get greedy?

  3. FelixP on May 4, 2007 7:37 am

    Film being such a different medium than any of the literary arts, including sequential art (comic books), I don’t feel the need for a film to ‘accurately’ depict any book it’s based upon. Sin City is interesting not because it thoroughly duplicates a comic book but because despite doing so it still works well as a film; the problems w/ the LotR movies are not that they didn’t hue closer to the books but that they have huge plot and character problems that prevent them from being great movies. So in this respect, let me say “grow up, fanboy”; did you want a Secret Wars movie before this to show where he got the alien costume?

    Yes, this is a different Venom from the original. Just like it’s a different Peter, MJ, Uncle Ben, Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Gwen Stacy, and nearly everything except J. Jonah Jameson and Aunt May. The original has merits as being an opposite of Spider-Man in being big, black, muscle-bound and very angry. The movie seeks to make Eddie a ‘dark mirror’ of Peter and puts Venom in a similar relation to Spidey. You can give it a chance or you can hold your comix tight to your chest and shake your little fist.

    And Carnage is just stupid, a simplistic extension of the concept for shock value and the EXTREME VIOLENCE trends that were taking over comics in the early 90s. I stopped reading around then for that reason, among others…

  4. molino on May 4, 2007 8:47 am

    Spider-Man 3 was an entertaining movie but the second one was much better. This movie did bite off more than it could chew. I agree with Felix though that you have to separate the movie from the comics. I enjoyed Topher Grace as Eddie Brock and Venom and I like that those two characters mirrored Peter Parker and Spider-Man. The third movie did not have the depth of the second one.

    Don’t want to say too much since no one else has seen it yet.

    PS – X-Men 2 is pretty awesome, but Spider-Man 2 > X-Men 2

  5. YLlama on May 4, 2007 9:55 am

    Agreed: Spider-Man 2 > X2.

  6. Ol' Dale on May 4, 2007 10:27 pm

    I have no opinion on this and will defer to my learned colleague….

  7. J. Minus on May 9, 2007 12:03 am

    I liked 3 best of all and everyone says I’m an idiot. I judge movies in a vacuum and don’t compare them to others. It’s just like with the Hitchhiker’s guide movie, people complained that it wasn’t like the book, when in reality the book, TV series, radio series, and movie where all different versions of the same story. I think the Spiderman franchise gets the spirit of the character better than any other comic movie other than Hellboy. Anyway, I noticed that when he was Venom he was significantly larger than when he was Topher. It was an interesting take. Artistic license is fine as long as it doesn’t end up stupid. Like x-men 3.