'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 [...]
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
![Venom Movie Origin Spider-Man TAS Connection Venom Movie Origin Spider-Man TAS Connection](https://media.comicbook.com/2018/02/venom-movie-origin-spider-man-tas-connection-1081194.jpeg)
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.