Nerd Processor
Why ‘Venom’ Is the Best Kind of Box Office Poison
How Sony turned a Spider-Man movie without Spider-Man into an unlikely success
On the list of clues suggesting we’ve all fallen into an alternate timeline where the entire world has gone wrong, the fact that a movie about a Spider-Man villain where Spider-Man is literally never once mentioned just made $200 million this weekend should be near the bottom. It’s not awful—it’s just not supposed to happen. But it definitely did.
There is no reason that Venom, a very odd superhero film, should have just had the most lucrative October movie opening ever. There are, however, many reasons it shouldn’t have — first and foremost being the aforementioned lack of Spider-Man. Venom’s entire character has been defined by the MIA hero. The “symbiote,” as the black alien sludge is called, first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1984 as a snazzy new black costume created by an alien machine. (Long story.) Eventually, Spidey discovered that Venom was an evil parasite and managed to free himself from it. The symbiote quickly bonded with Spider-Man-hating disgraced journalist Eddie Brock (played by Tom Hardy in the film), and the two bonded, figuratively and literally, over their hate of Spider-Man. This is why Venom looks so much like Spidey, right down to…
