'Venom': Could the Origin of the Symbiote Have Animated Series Roots?

The Venom trailer is now online, but for a lot of Marvel fans, it truly was just a tease. We got to see the first glimpses of the alien symbiotes and Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) first transforming into Venom, but not a lot of plot details that confirm which version of the character's Marvel Comics origin we're going to get.

The classic Venom origin story requires a lot of set up from Spider-Man, which is something we're not going to get in this live-action film, but there are hints that the film could be drawing origin details from a different source - like one of the Spider-Man animated series!

Promethium X

In the '90s Spider-Man: The Animated Series, the Venom symbiote's origin is connected to a all-important MacGuffin element called "Promethium X." Astronaut John Jameson encountered it on an asteroid in space, and harvested it as a possible replacement for fossil fuels; however, when he took the ore, the asteroid started to ooze a black liquid, causing Jameson to make a rushed escape that ended in his shuttle crashing in back to earth.

The Promethium X changed hands a lot, but when a second sample of it crashed on Earth months later, it came with a surprise: that "black ooze," which were actually living symbiote creatures, which became Venom and Carnage.

A Fitting Origin

This particular version of the Venom origin story is good for this particular movie adaptation, in that it is one of the easiest ones that can be done without a lot of Spider-Man influence.

A space mission that brings a new ore to earth, only to find that ore carries some alien life form, is perfect for an investigative story for a reporter (Eddie Brock) who gets in over his head. It's also still small enough for all the alien sci-fi / horror to play out, yet still be contained enough for it not to upset the continuity of the larger Spider-Man or Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise.

From the footage in the teaser, it seems the Spider-Man: TAS origin will be married to Venom's "Lethal Protector" storyline form the '90s. That miniseries saw Eddie Brock in San Francisco (the movie's setting), investigating a case that led to him being kidnapped by The Life Foundation (the movie's antagonists), who extracted multiple symbiote suits to be used as bio-weapons. Venom and Spider-Man ultimately had to defeat the weaponized suits working as a team.

There's also still room in all this for Venom's Ultimate universe origin to be worked in, as well. In that version, there's a connective thread between Eddie Brock and Peter Parker/Spider-Man: their fathers were both researchers who worked on the symbiote as a science project. The film could still use that history as the foundation for Brock and Parker's crossover.

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How did you like the Venom trailer? What origin Easter eggs did you spot?

Venom is currently scheduled to hit theaters on October 5, 2018.