[Movies] McFarlane Talks Venom Movie
Posted by Ashish on 08.06.2008
Venom's creator speaks out on possible movie...
Todd McFarlane, the co-creator of the Venom character for the Amazing Spider-Man comics, recently spoke with Newsarama about a possible Venom movie.
"He should be creepier than he was in Spider-Man 3. You don't want to scare the kids, because the kids love the character, but I think you could add a little bit of a creep factor. I mean, it never bugged me to watch Frankenstein as a kid, so you could have a little bit of it, as long as you have a good story backing it up."
But McFarlane has his doubts about doing films focusing on villains.
"I'm thinking about how they want to make anti-heroes nowadays," he said, citing Halle Berry's disastrous turn in Catwoman as an example. "Those don't work. The reason they're so cool as a bad guy is because they're bad. And as soon as you try to give too much humanity to them, then you go, 'No! Now they're not as good as a bad guy because you're trying to redeem them'."
He added that it is possble to make a villain story work, but that it is difficult.
"Don Corleone and The Sopranos are examples of characters who were able to entice viewer sympathy despite their villainy, but they were human. Can you bring that mentality to Venom and make it work? Or do you make him all bad?"
Why would anyone solicit McFarlane's advice about anything character-driven?
The man is a hack and couldn't write his way out of a paper bag.
Posted By: Colin (Guest) on August 06, 2008 at 03:25 PM
we tune into the Friday 13th and Nightmare movies to see the bad guy all the time. Maybe Venom should go crystal lake on some teen age kids.. Then maybe he can go into space.
Posted By: squirrel master (Guest) on August 06, 2008 at 04:31 PM
I think McFarlane is spot on. Especially in regard to what it would take to make Venom non goofy and so on. In my mind, Venom was at his anti hero best in his first couple solo mini series back in the day and to a cedrtain extent in some his his later ones. Meaning, there was always the feeling that Eddie Brock would eventually lose control, and go against his punishing those he seen as sinners and just completely going with the dark intent of the symbiote. It made it, at times, an intense read becasue you were never fully sure if the issue you were reading was the issue where Venom would go from ass kicking anti hero to full out villain, plus there was always the fact that he'd drop almost anything to get a shot at spidey. He was good, but still oh so bad.
I regard to McFarlane not being able to write a character driven story, you really only need to look at his first story arc with Spawn and the cartoon series, which he wrote, I thin, to see that when he's keeping things more or less street level and really delving into the ordeal with Al Simmons; family and coming to grips with the deal you made, you can see that he has some writing chops. I think the problem came up when He tried to take the story from what made it so imensly popular in the first place and go into a huge thing in the later run of the comic series.
Venom as a movie can work, but I think it needs to be creepy and just intense enough to captivate the older audiance while still able to have younger movie goers watch and feel comfortable with the content. It's a fine line to walk, but the Dark night proved it can be done...althoug in an entirely different role for the protagonist.
Posted By: JC (Guest) on August 06, 2008 at 05:56 PM
Dude....stfu
Posted By: Dude (Guest) on August 06, 2008 at 07:02 PM
Way to go, Colin!
I don't doubt that Venom can carry his own movie; they gave him his own comic in the '90's and it was good in the beginning. Funeral Pyre was awesome, and The Madness was just crazy.
Posted By: Salvage (Guest) on August 06, 2008 at 07:30 PM
after a lously half-assed movie debut, the Venom character is basically ruined on the big screen. I really doubt they could make, and market a movie about the character.
Posted By: Davis (Guest) on August 06, 2008 at 08:10 PM
McFarlane didn't write the Spawn animated series. The last really good thing he wrote was Spawn #50 and that was 12 years ago.
I say this as a lifelong McFarlane fan: The guy's a great businessman and created a good character - He made his bones with a comic about a badass, demonic anti-hero, back in the 90s when everyone else was doing it...he just happened to be a little bit better at it than most of the others. But he was always more artist than writer. He's never been particularly great with long term characterization and probably doesn't have any desire to be.
Ultimately, a Venom movie is a terrible idea. Just get back to work on rebuilding Spider-Man.
Posted By: Danger Boy (Guest) on August 06, 2008 at 09:08 PM
McFarlane is the George Lucas of the comic book world. Pretty pictures + uninventive plot + crappy dialogue = a mediocre comic book.
McFarlane's main contribution to the industry was that he broke away from the big two and showed every artist that they can own their work and be successful without DC and Marvel.
Posted By: DW (Guest) on August 07, 2008 at 08:52 AM
I do think a Venom movie based on the 2003 mini-series would be a good way to go. Would get him a new host, fudge around his death in the Spidey movie, and make him all sorts of creepy. Would be somewhat of a problem with the total horror ripoff of "The Thing", though...
Posted By: With Electric Fire (Guest) on August 07, 2008 at 12:43 PM
"Then maybe he can go into space"
Umm, technically he is from space.
Posted By: Scott NM (Guest) on August 07, 2008 at 08:21 PM
I think he should do a Carnage movie instead
Posted By: Jones (Guest) on August 13, 2008 at 05:39 PM
