There's been a lot of talk from critics over the last few days about everything Venom gets wrong as a movie. The character's co-creator, however, says it did one thing very right. Todd MacFarlane, probably best known as the creator of Spawn, also had a hand in creating Venom during his days at Marvel, and the comic writer says that there was really only one thing about the character's film debut that was important to him. He wanted Venom to be physically huge and so he's happy he got that much. According to MacFarlane...
For Venom, I only wanted one thing. I was very simple. Please, for the love of God, make him big. Right? Because when i designed him he was big, he was like a house. So Spider-Man was skinny, Venom was big, and so you couldn't have a physical fight because Venom would win and so now Spider-Man has to get intellectually smart to beat him. Please, please, please give me something big and I saw big. So I had one big box and they checked it for me. I saw a big Venom onscreen more than once. It was cool.
You've got to start somewhere, and for Todd MacFarlane, all he really wanted to see was that the big screen Venom was a big ass dude, and as far as that part went, the movie came through. Even though there was no specific need to make Venom huge, because he didn't have a smaller Spider-Man to fight in this movie, the film still made Venom his physically imposing self. So if they ever do have Eddie Brock go up against Spider-Man, as has been implied could potentially happen at some point, the fight will look the way it was designed to look in the comics.
Of course, Todd MacFarlane also says that he would have liked to have seen Venom as an R-rated movie, so he obviously didn't get everything he wanted, but the look was apparently a bigger deal for him than the film's rating.
It certainly does make some sense. As MacFarlane explains to IGN, Venom's size wasn't simply a design choice but something intrinsic to the idea of the character. He had to be big and imposing. If he wasn't that would seem to imply that the filmmakers might not have understood the idea behind who Venom was supposed to be. The good news is that they clearly did.
And the fans have clearly responded as well. While the critical reception to Venom has been less than stellar, the audience has had a much more favorable response, giving the movie a solid CInemascore and buying tickets to the tune of $80 million worth over the course of the opening weekend. This is big news not just for Venom, but for the entire cinematic universe that Sony is planning to build around Spider-Man's friends and foes, that may or may not actually include Spider-Man.
