Why Flash Thompson Should Star in a VENOM MOVIE


Now I know what you’re thinking.  This sounds like a terrible idea, to which I say, here me out!  Believe it or not, I have a plan on how this could work.  So in recent interview with IGN, Amazing Spider-Man 2 producers, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, expressed their fandom in the character of Venom and their interest in writing for him the in the future.  This little piece of information coinciding with the fact that director Marc Webb has said that the fourth entry in the Amazing Spider-Man franchise could be a spin-off.

So then I asked the question a lot of people asked.  Why not do a spin-off of Venom?  The problem with that, however, is that Venom is largely recognized as a classic Spider-Man villain and the character has always struggled to maintain his own series outside of any Spider-Man title.  Or at least that was the case until recently when Flash Thompson took the symbiote and the character was brilliantly reinvented as a alien-powered commando with a serious case of Jekyll and Hyde syndrome.  So then I thought, why not just do a Venom movie about Flash Thompson?  But how would that work in a way where we still please the fans of the Eddie Brock Venom (I’m in your camp too, guys!), but also get a chance to see this surprisingly successful version of the character get the spotlight?  So I came up with a plan, and I came up with it quick.

 

So here’s how we do this.  It seems more than likely based on how they’re setting up Amazing Spider-Man 2 that Amazing Spider-Man 3 will probably feature the Green Goblin as the main villain, as it probably should be, but lets say we start planting the seeds for Venom in small ways in the third movie so we can focus on him for the fourth movie, assuming it doesn’t go straight to spin-off territory after that.

Here’s my proposal.  Either in the second or third movie, we have a tour around Oscorp where, in passing, we see a mysterious black ooze encased in some sort of see-through container being examined by scientists.  For all intents and purposes, we leave it at that for the length of the movie.  Something small to grab fans attention without making it too obvious what’s gonna happen.  Still with me?  Okay, good.

Here’s where we escalate things.  At the end of the third movie, something happens around Oscorp, presumably in a fight between Spidey and the Green Goblin, and the lab gets wrecked, and the black ooze mysteriously vanishes, which we don’t bring attention to until the inevitable post-credit scene.  Than Amazing Spider-Man 4 starts up with Spider-Man looking over the wreckage and the ooze hitching a ride on his boot or something like they did in Spectacular Spider-Man.

Anyway, we get a bit of retread of the black suit similar to what we got in Spider-Man 3 except this time, it will be good.  And we have the inevitable building conflict between him and Eddie Brock who will take a page from the Ultimate Spider-Man series and have them be childhood friends who got separated after their parents died on the same plane.  This could possibly be too much since it sounds like they’re doing something similar with Harry in the new one, but one problem at a time.

So Spider-Man and the new Venom go toe-to-toe and Venom inevitably looses, but here’s the important part, EDDIE BROCK LIVES.  I emphasize that, because it will become more important later on.  Spider-Man stops Venom by using sonar and/or fire to defeat him (always surprises me how we forget fire as a symbiote weakness) and causes the suit to abandon Eddie.  Spidey catches Eddie, but looses the suit; however, unbeknownst to him, the suit is found and captured by the U.S. Military.

Flash Thompson, at this point in the story, is out of high school and has already had the tragic events which led him to loose his legs in combat.  We have three movies to get to this point for Flash so it shouldn’t be a problem.  From here, the military view him as the perfect candidate for Project Venom and BOOM!  Now we have had Eddie Brock Venom and now Flash Thompson Venom.  Everybody wins!

Now I know that was a lot of set-up, but here’s where things can get really interesting.  Now that Flash Thompson has the suit, now we can have a really cool espionage superhero movie where the spy has to resist the urge to turn into a monster and eat everybody.  That sounds kind of stupid when I say it out loud, but if it’s done anything like the book, it could be amazing.  But what would it be about and who would be in it?  That’s the important question, isn’t it?

So here’s my second proposal for the actual Venom movie.  The main villain for a good portion of the book’s early run has been the Crime-Master who, despite the silly name, is actually a fun villain so I say we keep him in.  Now if you’ve read the book, than the first obvious villain to actually fight is Jack O’ Lantern, but I disagree, save him for a sequel.  In my version of the story, after the events of Spider-Man 4, Crime-Master sees an opportunity to manufacture his own symbiotes for his own uses and fashions a new one stronger than the one that came before.  But who to test it on, I wonder?  Well how about our dear old friend, Eddie Brock, broken out of jail and bonded with this new symbiote to become TOXIN.  There you go Hollywood!  I just solved the whole storytelling part of this spin-off for you!  Make it happen, and don’t mess it up!  Everyone else, I can only assume I gave you hope for the future.  That thud you just heard back there?  That was me dropping the mic.  Peace!