So far, all movie audiences have seen of Spider-man's fearsome foe Venom is the rather slapdash attempt at the character in Spider-Man 3, which in no way did the character justice. The antithesis of Spider-Man, was quite a dark character, and his many appearances and solo books really put forward how terrifying a character he was, something completely lost in the third part of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man franchise. With the announcement that the villain is getting his own spin-off from The Amazing Spider-Man, putting him in the role of anti-hero, the sins of Spider-Man 3 (in relation to Venom at least. That movie as a whole is unredeemable) may be erased, with director and co-writer Alex Kurtzman promising to bring the character back to his comic book roots, and make him dark and scary again. Speaking to MTV, Kurtzman said, "Well, Venom is sort of the flip side in that there are certain lines that Spider-Man won't cross because he's Peter Parker, and Peter Parker will only do certain things and Venom is an entirely different character".
So far, Venom looks to be far removed from the lighter, more comic book feeling of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and more in keeping with the darker take on the character Sony wanted to run with in the first The Amazing Spider-Man. It didn't work for Spider-Man, but would suit Venom down to the ground. Kurtzman further reinforced the point, saying, "Venom in a weird way, is the representation of every line that will get crossed. He's a much darker character. I wouldn't even say more complicated because I think they're both very complicated characters, but I think the attraction for me to Venom is the idea that you can do things that you can't do with Spider-Man."
The announcement of The Amazing Spider-Man spin-off's, Venom and the similarly villain centric The Sinister Six, did come out of left field, but the way Sony seems to be approaching them promises something different from what we've seen of the Spidey universe so far. No word on when we will see Venom, but with The Sinister Six set for 2016, and The Amazing Spider-Man 3 pencilled in for 2018 (originally the date for The Amazing Spider-Man 4), in between seems like the perfect placement for the black suited anti-hero.
