Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Sony's doubling down on the Disney/MCU playbook with their Spidey Universe films. Instead of jumping right into Sinister Six (like they had planned with Marc Webb's Amazing Spider-Man films) they're going to ease into something bigger by doing a whole bunch of one-offs.
THR spilled that Tom Hardy's Venom will be facing off against Carnage in his film and that standalone villain movies featuring both Mysterio and Kraven the Hunter are in the works. Let's walk through that a bit.
Carnage in an R-rated Venom movie is a great idea. You establish symbiotes and if you're doing a Venom story without Spider-Man the next best thing to do is bring in Carnage. You'll get to see Eddie Brock/Venom's anti-hero come out when faced with a pure psychopath with the power of this alien parasite.
Mysterio is a character I've long wanted to see in the films. Remember back in the day when the theory was Sam Raimi was building to Mysterio and that Bruce Campbell was going to play him, all his little cameos in the Spider-Man movies really seeding this failed performer's backstory? I know it was all fan speculation, but that would have been perfect for the tone of those Raimi movies.
Do I see Mysterio being cool enough to support a 2 hour movie about him getting his foggy fishbowl head? I don't know about that, but you get the right writer and/or director involved and anything is possible.
Kraven the Hunter is one of my favorite Spider-Man villains. His appearance in the '80s made a big mark on me. It was the first time I registered Spider-Man being out of his league. He was outmatched and was getting for-real hurt and I loved that about that Last Hunt series. Do I love the character himself enough to think he'd support his own movie? Again, not really, but I'm willing to give it a try if someone really interesting signs on to tell that story.
My gut feeling is that without Spider-Man himself stringing all these villains together this plan might fizzle on Sony, but their strongest card right now is Venom. He can survive without Spider-Man, especially if he's in a hard R rated movie fighting Carnage. Seeing Carnage lay waste to people (a serial killer with the power of the symbiote) and Venom/Eddie Brock having to take a more heroic position to stop him sounds cool as hell to me.
I love the characters of Mysterio and Kraven, but really want to see them face off against Spider-Man instead of leading their own movies.
What do you folks think about all this? Who would you cast Cletus Kasady? My buddy Aaron suggested Thomas Middleditch and that's pretty inspired, I think. Finding someone who can play twitchy psychotic gleefully murdering his way through New York would be a great counterbalance to Tom Hardy's brooding, split-personality anti-hero. What do you think?
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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