John Malkovich rumored to play SPIDER-MAN 4 villain

[exodus]

Truth be told it felt like the script was re-written just to add him in there because he did feel tacked on and just a means to get rid of the life form.

Originally, The Vulture, as played by Sir Ben Kingsley, was slated to be the second (or third) villain of the story. It wasn't until Raimi relented after much persistance by Avi Arad that he took out Vulture and put Venom there in his place, and with Venom came the symbiote storyline.

However, fans never should have expected much to being with seeing how they never played up Venom even in the films trailers. That alone was a hint he wasn't going to be much of a focus. Seriously, all the signs were there prior to the films release. Instead much like Boba Fett, fans created their own hype about Venom's involvement in the film.

Fans wanted Venom. With all due respect to them, he was handled all wrong. He should have been cut entirely or just reworked somehow -- that or the film should have lost some characters, because it was jampacked the way it was. Anyway, I doubt fans really pay attention to trailers and that sort of thing. They hear a movie is coming out called Spider-Man 3, they hear Venom is going to be in it, they see a preview or two, and form expectations of their own. You can't really fault them for it.

What I'm trying to say is... it appears as if you're saying it was the fans' fault over the handling of Venom in Spider-Man 3, when in actuality it was the fault of the writers, producers and director, Sam Raimi. Of course that's subjective, but how can you fault fans' desires in seeing a character brought respectfully and faithfully to life?

Much like how we're passing judgement on just the rumor of the Vultress, when nothing official has been said yet.

I think we're merely commenting on the rumor. We are allowed to do that, aren't we?

You're missing my point.
Every trailer they showed never had Venom in it or if it did, it was one shot for like a minute. That was a huge hint Venom wasn't going to be a big feature in it. A majority of the photo books that came out before the film never even showed Venom in it. So again, they were down playing his involvement in the film from the start. The writers, producers & directors IMO weren't hyping him up, they in fact were down playing him and trying to get that point across. The fan hype surrounding the character far exceeded his purpose in the film. I don't see how that's the fault of Raimi, especially after telling us over & over again he didn't want to do Venom in the first place.

Raimi told us he did wanna do him.
He wasn't hyped up in any trailer or book.
We knew Venom was added at the last minute.

All that should have told us he wasn't going to be a big deal or prominately featured. I don't wish to sound arrogant in saying this but from all of that, I didn't expect to see Venom at all beyond the scene in the church in Spidey 3 because that's all they showed of him in the trailers.

I'm sorry but I think the clues were in our face the whole time.
So my point is, rumors can easily become hype and lead to expectations that might not pan out. Fans also were calling Harry Osborne "Hobogoblin" before the film came out too, for another example.

 

[JacksonArcher]

You're missing my point.
Every trailer they showed never had Venom in it or if it did, it was one shot for like a minute. That was a huge hint Venom wasn't going to be a big feature in it. A majority of the photo books that came out before the film never even showed Venom in it. So again, they were down playing his involvement in the film from the start. The writers, producers & directors IMO weren't hyping him up, they in fact were down playing him and trying to get that point across. The fan hype surrounding the character far exceeded his purpose in the film. I don't see how that's the fault of Raimi, especially after telling us over & over again he didn't want to do Venom in the first place.

Films downplay characters all the time, especially comic-book films where the filmmakers try to keep the appearance of a certain character a surprise, or at very least not spoil it. For example, Two-Face was not in any of the trailers for The Dark Knight. Actually, he was at the tail end of one, the first cut trailer that debuted at Wizard World and came online half a year later, but the filmmakers tried to downplay the appearance of Two-Face, and to be fair he had about the same screentime as Venom, except people didn't really complain all that much about his appearance since it was overly faithful to the comic-book character.

Raimi told us he did wanna do him.
He wasn't hyped up in any trailer or book.
We knew Venom was added at the last minute.

Venom was definitely hyped by the studio and to a lesser extent the film's producers. Avi Arad, Grant Curtis, Laura Ziskin were all talking about Venom. In interviews, Raimi would get questioned about him. I think the hype was there, but the studio was obviously trying to downplay it because they wanted to keep Venom a surprise for fans.

All that should have told us he wasn't going to be a big deal or prominately featured. I don't wish to sound arrogant in saying this but from all of that, I didn't expect to see Venom at all beyond the scene in the church in Spidey 3 because that's all they showed of him in the trailers.
I'm sorry but I think the clues were in our face the whole time.
So my point is, rumors can easily become hype and lead to expectations that might not pan out. Fans also were calling Harry Osborne "Hobogoblin" before the film came out too, for another example.

I understand your point. I think my point is that Venom didn't really get that much development, and alongside that, he was mishandled creatively, which I think is why fans were disappointed, and in my opinion rightly so. Two-Face -- or Harvey Two-Face as he was called in The Dark Knight -- had minimal screentime too, but at the very least he had a lot of development thanks to Harvey Dent being in a lot of the film, and the last act when he became Two-Face didn't feel as contrived because his character was leading this way for the past hour and a half. I think if Raimi cut out Sandman, or any of the other extraneous characters that chewed up screentime, a more focus could have been devoted to Eddie Brock/Venom so his transformation would felt more natural, and less contrived.

 

[exodus]

^^But Two-Face/Harvey was planned out to be in the film the whole time, Venom wasn't and it was probably too late to re-write the script properly to give him the fleshing out he required. We've seen how Marvel sets release dates and rushes production just to make a blockbuster summer flix. Seriously, must we bring up X3 & Wolverine again, just to mention 2 such examples.

DC/WB allowed Nolan to take his time to develope a tight story.

 

[JacksonArcher]

^^But Two-Face/Harvey was planned out to be in the film the whole time, Venom wasn't and it was probably too late to re-write the script properly to give him the fleshing out he required. We've seen how Marvel sets release dates and rushes production just to make a blockbuster summer flix. Seriously, must we bring up X3 & Wolverine again, just to mention 2 such examples.

DC/WB allowed Nolan to take his time to develope a tight story.

We don't know for sure how soon Venom was incorporated into the story. So, in that case, we can't really judge. Sam Raimi has, in the past, changed his mind about villains ever since the first film. At one point, Doc Ock was going to be in the first Spider-Man. The Vulture had made its way to the development phase of Spider-Man 3. Heck, Raimi changed the black Spider-Man costume -- it was originally going to be the original black & white costume, but he changed it to just the original design but black since he felt the black & white design just didn't work out. According to Spider-Man 3 co-writer John August, Venom was in the script for a long time enough to endure several rewrites, to the point where August was considering splitting the script in two, but couldn't find a point to insert a cliffhanger that made sense within the story. So obviously Venom was in the story-drafting process with enough time to incorporate his character into the general arc of the film, the script was just flooded with so many different characters and storylines it had to service that Venom just got lost along the way in the process.

Also, on a side note, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was hardly rushed. David Benioff started writing the script back in summer 2006, exactly three years before the film was slated to open. The reason that film was so awful was not because it was rushed, but because it had a medicore director, a meddling studio and studio head in the form of Tom Rothman, and an awful rewrite by Skip Woods, who delivered us such classics as Hitman and Swordfish. On another note, Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn had a year to develop the X-Men 3 script. The reason why the film sucked as much as it did was because Brett Ratner was directing, and with his ADD sensibility, felt the film needed to have a short running time so a lot of the nuisance and quality storytelling of the 1st two films were eliminated in favor of action sequences and an overloaded amount of needless characters. Bryan Singer had as much time to make the first X-Men as Brett Ratner did to make X-Men: The Last Stand. The difference? Bryan Singer is a good director, and Brett Ratner is simply not.

 

[EmmanuelZorg]

Malkovich sounds like an awesome choice to be Vulture, i'm there for him for the role.

 

[Anwar]

For all the talk of wanting Venom to be this huge guy, that doesn't really matter. Heck, I personally despise Venom's design in the comics because it's the usual 90s Macfarlane generic design used for various anti-hero types. If they wanted Venom to appear as the Anti-Spidey, then making him look closer to Spidey's frame makes more sense.

As for the Two-Face comparisons, they're inherently different things: Venom was the unneeded add-on to the movie (the entire symbiote story was unneeded, really), while the plot really revolved around Sandman. If they cut out the entire symbiote story, then they might've been able to rewrite it to have Sandman and Harry drive the plot better (Harry may have been the one to create Sandman, or manipulate the situation from behind the scenes, instead fo the amnesia thing).

Also, Harvey Dent was a major figure to the plot as the DA and the "Hope of Gotham" (frankly, I thought that whole thing was BS. Jim Gordon is the true White Knight of Gotham), I can't see how some weasely photographer could play such a huge role.

If they wanted Venom so badly, they should've made Raimi introduce Brock and Gwen in SM2 to better set them up, and made them more important figures (Eddie is a PI hired by Harry to observe Peter and see what his connection to Spidey is so he gets a day job at the Bugle to do so, play up Gwen's relationship to the police and to Peter, etc) so they both aren't just add-ons to the plot.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ I must admit, I preferred the idea of Venom and his alter-ego as a sort of anti-Spidey and anti-Peter and preferred that he was played by someone with similar build to Maguire, rather than a bodybuilder type.

I also don't think that these changes were any greater than say, Harvey Dent being scarred as a result of a fire started by the Joker rather than acid thrown by a mobster in court; than the Joker wearing make-up and having facial scars, rather than having white skin and a fixed rictus grin; than Ras Al Ghul being a mortal European leader of an immortal Eastern organisation rather than an immortal Arab or the Scarecrow being a young, short and handsome guy rather than a tall, skinny Ichabod Crane type.

What went wrong with Venom is the rushing of the story and Raimi's evident disinterest in him. For all the cosmetic changes to the Batman villains in the Nolanverse, Nolan clearly was interested in them and gave them appropriate screen time and purpose.

 

[Anwar]

But Venom's story just isn't that interesting, especially when you already have an Osborn around. Venom's whole schtick was ripped off from Norman and Harry to begin with since both were out of action when he was created.

Heck, in the very first Venom story the actual encounter/battle between Peter and Venom was only like 1/4 of the issue. The rest was MJ warning Peter about him, Brock standing around ranting about his revenge, Peter figuring out it's the symbiote on someone else, etc. Except most of it wasn't necessary since Venom turned out to be a new character and not an old one augmented by the symbiote (which disappointed a lot of readers). His crap origin didn't help matters (you, without any intention, proved I was a bad journalist by stopping a serial killer I claimed was someone else!)