Welcome to the second and final part of my fan cast and plot for the
Venom movie.
Last week, I assembled my dream cast for the movie, including Ryan Kwanten, Robert Knepper, and Reese Witherspoon, and set up Eddie Brock's origin story and motivation for becoming Venom. Today, I'll continue the story with how Eddie falls into becoming a villain while maintaining a thread of morality in him as he faces off against his deadliest foe.
After Ann's untimely demise due to Spider-Man's failure in stopping Cletus Kasady's murder spree, Eddie grows to hate his hero for not possessing the "venom" in his bite against crime, as he explains it in his blog, which also takes a turn for the critical. His new stance against Spider-Man wins him Jameson and his following's favors for a short while, but Eddie's hatred continues to skyrocket as his personal life begins to fall apart after Ann's death, causing him to slander against the Spider-Man with unfounded libel. Eddie takes Jameson's scathing editorials one step further, earning the Bugle a bad reputation and decreased readership all around. This gets Eddie fired and blacklisted from applying to any other news publication in New York City, which he also blames Spider-Man for.
As his financial issues continue to amass, Eddie is evicted from his apartment. Figuring he could dig up more information about Oscorp's dirty secrets and bribe them for money, Eddie uses his expired press pass to gain access into the Oscorp Tower and weasels his way around security into some of its secured labs. Just as he uncovers the Sinister Six chambers, he's caught by security and hauled off to a detention center within the building. The Gentleman interrogates Eddie about what he's seen and his purpose for being there, and Eddie remains adamant about exposing Oscorp's secrets if his demands aren't met.
Harry observes the interrogation from behind a one-way glass wall and is so intrigued by Eddie's dedication and abandon that he enters the room to speak further with Eddie against the Gentleman's counsel. Harry pulls up the information he collected on the intruder and mentions Eddie's work in relation to Spider-Man, inquiring about his personal history with the hero. Eddie relays his story, and, touched by Eddie's absolute hatred for the wall crawler, Harry gives Eddie a choice: either work for him or be set free with Oscorp always watching over him, ready to silence Eddie with any means necessary if he ever spoke about what he saw at Oscorp. Being the smart man that he claims to be, Eddie chose the former option. (What he doesn't know is that Harry was going to have Eddie killed then and there if he chose the latter option.)
The job Harry has for Eddie is to fill the role of a seventh back-up seat for his Sinister Six utilizing an experimental body suit Oscorp had been secretly developing as a part of its slate of super soldier projects. The suit in question is synthesized from the organic tissue of an extraterrestrial species extracted from a meteorite that fell to Earth in the 1980s, which Oscorp had acquired from the United States military as part of a defense contract.
The original species was parasitic in nature, so Oscorp studied it and synthetically modified a clone of its organic structure and DNA to make it more symbiotic and relatively safe to use for humans. The suit, by nature, is highly weaponizable, as it can adapt to a wide variety of environments and absorb unique abilities and characteristics into its genetic memory. The suit only possesses two known weaknesses that, from testing, have proven to be largely irremovable from artificial means: high-frequency sonic vibrations and intense thermal radiation.
A part of Harry's plans for the Sinister Six is to publicly depose Spider-Man as a hero (this detail is pure speculation on my part), so he asks Eddie to replace Spider-Man and humiliate him by showing him up as a better superhero. Eddie seizes the opportunity to become the hero Spider-Man could never be—as he puts it, "I'll be the Venom Spider-Man lacks!" To aid Eddie in his transformation into becoming the new Spider-Man, Harry has the symbiote suit injected with the spider venom that empowered Spider-Man and cured Harry of his life-threatening disease. The symbiote suit adapts most of Spider-Man's own abilities with the exception of his Spider Sense, which it compensates for by developing the ability to cancel out the wall crawler's special ability. Additionally, Harry has the suit incorporate Oscorp's biocable (Spider-Man's webbing) into its mass, allowing it the ability to organically generate webbing stronger that Spider-Man's own—the only trade-off being that the suit has to expend its own mass to create the webbing.
Since the suit is still in its experimental stages, Eddie is limited to 48-hour windows in which he's bonded to the suit—a safety measure to ensure Eddie and the suit's safety and
status quo. (This is borrowed from the comics, in which Project Rebirth 2.0 restricts Flash Thompson to a set number of 48-hour missions to avoid the symbiote from forming a permanent bond to him.) Oscorp constantly monitors Eddie's psychology and physiology to make sure the suit isn't affecting him, but Eddie consistently lies during his psychology tests about any mental effects because he wants nothing more than to complete the tests and have his revenge on Spider-Man.
As Eddie works with Oscorp in secret testing the suit's capabilities and physically and tactically training himself to become a superhero, his personal life begins to improve. His salary as an official Oscorp employee (under the guise of a Public Relations Officer) allows him to purchase a much better apartment than the one he shared with Ann, and time enough to focus his rage against devising a plan of attack against his wife's killers as his heroic debut. He uses his resources at Oscorp to research both Cletus' and Peter Parker's profiles, learning what makes them both tick—their strengths, weaknesses, and exploitable secrets.
Every day that passes during his training period, though, Eddie grows more and more impatient and vengeful. Eventually, he takes off with the suit against the Gentleman's orders and pursues Cletus on his own. He catches a break as he finds Spider-Man already in pursuit of the murderer. Remembering Harry's scheme to take down Spider-Man, Eddie turns his focus to apprehending Cletus; however, his rage against Spider-Man's petulance in response to the introduction of the new hero causes Eddie to selfishly lash out against the wall crawler anytime he came near to apprehending Cletus. Eddie is able wound Cletus severely before Eddie's intense emotional feedback destabilizes his control over the suit, transforming him into the monstrous Venom the fans are familiar with. (Up until this point, Venom's look resembled a fiercer looking black suit Spider-Man without the Venom mouth.) Eddie manages to wrestle back control after Spider-Man beats on him a few times, and escapes the scene.
Cletus is arrested by the police and rushed to the hospital for his fatal wounds. While on the operation table, though, the surgeons discover a detached fragment of the suit embedded within Cletus' wounds. He violently transforms into Carnage and escapes the hospital, leaving behind nearly a hundred corpses as he flees for sanctuary underground in a bestial rage.
Eddie returns to Oscorp for help, but is instead met with opposition for his defiance. He narrowly escapes with his and the suit's lives and is forced to avoid returning to his apartment when he finds Oscorp security casing the place. Knowing of no other safe place to hide, he retreats to Luna Park on Coney Island during its off-season hours in October—which used to be his an Ann's favorite vacation getaway spot in college. As he camps out within the mostly vacant amusement park, Eddie tries to regain control over the suit, which has regained its sentience after prolonged attachment to Eddie.
He learns from the suit's psychic memory projections that it was in fact the original alien species that had crashed onto Earth years before and not a synthesized copy as Oscorp led Eddie to believe, and that Oscorp essentially tortured and manipulated the creature into the abomination that it became. The process Oscorp used to domesticate the alien lobotomized it for a short period of time until it could regenerate its consciousness after prolonged exposure to a host. It wants nothing more than a kind host that won't abuse it after all it had been through and vengeance on its abusers.
Eddie sympathizes with the alien from his own experiences with his father and Ann's death, and agrees to share his body with the alien so they can reap vengeance on their oppressors. Eddie and the symbiote create a plan of attack that would appease both of their thirsts for vengeance: Venom would play along with Harry and his plans to take down Spider-Man, figuring that the hero would have no chance at defending himself against so many enemies at once. As they all took on Spider-Man, though, Venom would systematically weaken the Sinister Six so that once Spider-Man was dead, he and the symbiote could turn on their allies and complete their revenge.
Eddie returns to Oscorp with the symbiote under the guise of surrender and tries to explain to the Gentleman that he wasn't in control of the suit when he first ran off. The Gentleman, however, is not as forgiving as Eddie had expected, and immediately forces the suit off of Brock and contains it. He then has Brock detained deep within Oscorp for studying the effects of the suit's prolonged exposure to the human body (and, in part, as punishment for Eddie's defiance and theft of company property).
Meanwhile, Cletus emerges from hiding and wanders the streets in a psychotic daze looking like Death himself—pale and gaunt. A foul voice whispers in his head, directing him where to go, and leads him to the Oscorp Tower. As he makes his way up the steps into the lobby, he's surrounded by police and security guards after concerned citizens called in about him as he walked the streets. He disobeys their orders to freeze and is mowed down in gunfire. When the police move in to confirm the kill, Cletus' pooling blood comes alive and attacks and kills his enemies while it resuscitates him.
As Carnage, Cletus slaughters all in his path as he makes his way into the tower and down into its lower levels to find and kill the Venom suit—the spawn's primary target. Harry readies himself as the Green Goblin to take on Carnage if he reaches the laboratory where the suit and Eddie are being held. Eddie tries to convince Harry to set him free and let him bond to the suit again, believing that Venom is the only qualified combatant against another symbiote, but Harry will hear none of it. Carnage finally arrives and Harry engages him in combat, only to learn soon enough that Eddie may be right—that even as the Green Goblin, he's outmatched against Carnage. Harry releases Eddie and the suit, allowing them to bond once more to become Venom.
Long story short (you can use your imagination at this point), Venom fights Carnage and learns that Cletus' suit was spawned from his own suit as a result of Oscorp's experimentation. The spawn evolved significantly from its abomination of a parent, making Carnage stronger than Venom and more resilient against the suit's major weaknesses. The only way Venom can stop Carnage is by luring him into a vat of boiling metal (maybe lead) in one of Oscorp's ancillary factories. The extreme heat weakens Cletus' suit long enough for the metal to cool and harden, encasing Carnage in a metal prison.
Venom's success in defeating Carnage and defending Harry earns him renewed favor and his position as the Sinister Six's back-up member. Eddie takes the offer on good terms, but continues to harbor his and the symbiote's secret plan for revenge. In the end credits scene, Harry visits another secret Oscorp lab (this time outside of Manhattan), where the Gentleman updates him on the status of extracting the Carnage symbiote from the metal casing. The Gentleman confirms that both the symbiote and Cletus are still alive within their prison, and asks Harry what he wants to do about Cletus. Harry smiles, and the movie cuts to black.
Thus concludes my
Venom movie pitch, but my dream for Venom's cinematic future doesn't end with his solo film! Look for a sequel to this story in my pitch for a post-
The Amazing Spider-Man 3 sequel in the near future. In the meantime, tell me what you thought about my version of the
Venom film. What did you like most, or what do you hope to see? What are your own plot pitches? Comment below, and if you'd like to submit your own
Venom movie plot pitch and fan cast for publication on
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