C'est arrivé dans votre voisinage amical
By Orion Petitclerc
San Diego Comic Con International is a wondrous place
where geek magic can foster widespread fandom or a smaller cult following. Last
year at SDCC 2012, Adi Shankar and Phil Joanou revitalized indie fan films with
Dirty Laundry, which starred Thomas
Jane as he reprised his role as Marvel Knight Frank Castle, a.k.a. The
Punisher, in a huge surprise ending. The short was an instant cult classic. So
at this year’s SDCC, Shankar returned to deliver a new short fan film at the
Machinima panel, called Truth in Journalism.
Produced by Shankar and written and directed by Joe Lynch, Truth in Journalism starred Ryan Kwanten of True Blood fame as down-on-his-luck journalist Eddie Brock, known
better as Spider-Man’s iconic archnemesis in black, Venom.
Before I begin, I must warn you that this review
contains major spoilers for those who’ve yet to watch this film. This is also a
very long, in-depth review, so buckle in.
 |
| "Venom Bites Dog"...or maybe "Man Bites Venom"? |
A Portrait in Black
On behalf of all Venom fans (whom I dub “Venomaniacs”)
and as a service to all the new comic book readers and those generally outside “the
know,” let me start off with a brief recount. According to whichever source you
may be more comfortable with, Spider-Man at one point wore a black-and-white
suit that was secretly an organic life form called a symbiote. He attained the
suit from either a machine on a distant planet called Battleworld during
Marvel’s cross-comic event, The Secret Wars,
or from a space rock that either fell to Earth (Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3) or was brought back from the
moon by astronauts (the 90’s Spider-Man:
The Animated Series). When Spidey found out about his new costume’s true
nature, he cast it off the only way he knew how: tolling bells in a bell tower
at Our Lady of Saints Church. (This church is seen and alluded to during a
scene in Truth in Journalism.)
Eddie Brock, who had previously ruined his reputation
as a journalist and was fired from the Daily Globe (Daily Bugle, if we’re
talking about Spider-Man 3 or Spider-Man: The Animated Series) for
false reporting, inherited the scorned suit, bonding with it to become the
malicious Venom. Fueled by the suit’s passionate hatred for Spidey and Brock’s
inability to accept responsibility for his actions and instead blame Spidey for
his issues, Venom had been a constant thorn in the wall crawler’s side, most
painfully because right off the bat Venom knew Spidey’s secret identity as
Peter Parker.
Since his first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #300, Venom has been a fan-favorite nemesis,
and has lead his own solo adventures in comics during Brock’s tenure before the
symbiote began host jumping in 2005. Fans were then graced in 2007 with Venom’s
film debut in Spider-Man 3.
Unfortunately, Raimi and producer Avi Arad’s Eddie Brock Jr. (played by Topher
Grace from That 70’s Show) and his
villainous alter ego were met with mixed reviews, most leaning towards the
negative feelings the whole of the film had mustered in moviegoers and comic
fans. Many of the complaints against Grace’s character stemmed from his lack of
bulk (which Venom was well known for) and unfaithful portrayal of the
character’s personality, plus his rushed development in an already crammed
roster of villains.
Ever since his train wreck of a debut, Venom fans have
been promised a solo spin-off film by Sony Pictures, and to this day a project
has yet to lift off the ground. Even with the Spider-Man movie franchise’s
reboot in 2012 with The Amazing
Spider-Man and Venom’s growing popularity in comics with the symbiote’s
bond to Parker’s once high school bully, Flash Thompson, Sony has little to
bring to the table outside barely-digestible tidbits of plans and
pre-production talks.
And then Truth
in Journalism came along, seemingly out of nowhere. Not to get ahead of
myself, but as a rabid (and, hopefully, one day officially recognized as a)
Venomaniac and a devout Eddie Brock fan, I feel I’m qualified to say that Truth in Journalism was the Venom film
we’ve all been waiting for—and, more importantly, the one we deserve.
Let’s Talk Geek
Lynch and Shankar’s possibly greatest contribution to
the film and fans is their faithfulness to the main source material: Venom’s
first appearance in the pages of Amazing
Spider-Man. Now, this isn’t to say this is a Venom film, per se; instead,
this is Brock’s film, as Venom only makes a brief appearance towards the end.
However, this is a neo-classic Brock:
Kwanten is not a ripped body builder as Todd McFarlane drew Brock, but he’s
still toned, and Truth in Journalism
features a scene in which Brock is pumping iron in his apartment. Brock’s
personality is also a bit more outgoing and spunky than the comics suggested,
embodying a passionate, stereotypic journalist and paying homage to the
character of Benoît from the 1992 cult classic, found footage, indie French
film, Man Bites Dog—which Lynch calls
Truth in Journalism’s “spiritual
ancestor,” and which plays a huge role in the style and story of the short film
(I’ll explain this further on).
 |
| Who else remembers KB Toys at the mall? Nice detail. |
But, most importantly of all, Kwanten’s Brock
is faithful to his comic counterpart in being absolutely creepy. There are many
points in the film where I felt like Brock was on the verge of snapping into
outright insanity, and his general disconnectedness from the horrors which he
makes his living from reporting on shadows in comparison to Grace’s sleazy,
dorky adaptation.
Truth in
Journalism is, in part, a period piece; the plot, characters, and
aesthetics are set in New York in 1988—the year in which Amazing Spider-Man #300 was published (though the production was
filmed in modern downtown Los Angeles). Even working on a very small budget,
the film’s crew did a phenomenal job with giving the setting and film that
older feel, especially with the added aesthetic of shooting in 16 mm black and
white film (again, another homage to Man
Bites Dog). Unlike its spiritual ancestor, Truth in Journalism features a soundtrack of popular songs from the
late 80’s which helped ground the setting along with the clothing and
hairstyles, including Europe’s “The Final Countdown” during the aforementioned
weight lifting scene.
 |
| Not too scrawny, but keep lifting, bro. |
The best parts of the film, in my fanatic opinion,
were the many references to the comics. One of the more recent sources of
reference included Brock calling himself an “administrator of truth,” and
claims to “put the ‘caution’ in cautionary tales,” which hearkens back to Venom: Dark Origin, a four-issue comic
run retelling Brock’s origin story. In Dark
Origin, Brock’s character was retconned for his film debut, and highlighted
his twisted journalism practices and belief of creating truth from the
reporter’s perspective. This wasn’t an attribute Brock was given in his debut
comic, but it serves the plot of Truth in
Journalism well.
Another reference in the film is the symbiote’s
morphing ability, as seen when Brock is caught talking to himself in his
apartment bathroom and quickly changing from wearing only workout shorts to a
suit and tie as quickly as shutting and opening the door. When Brock turns into
Venom, he pukes out the symbiote onto the floor and it crawls up his body,
referencing the modern inclination of artists and the Spider-Man 3 movie’s sickly symbiote dispersion and transformation.
Another sweet reference is one Brock makes during the
bar scene when he takes his leave, saying, “I gotta go see a lady-friend,”
specifically referring to the scene in the comics in which Venom makes his
first appearance at Parker’s apartment and terrorizes Mary Jane.
But the most obscure and juicy of all references is
Brock’s fateful Sin Eater debacle, which before Truth in Journalism was used only in the comics. In both Spider-Man: The Animated Series and Spider-Man 3, Brock’s origin was
retconned so that he ruined his career from falsely reporting Spider-Man’s
supposed “criminal” activities and publishing the articles with the Daily
Bugle; in the comics, however, Brock had run an exclusive set of articles with
the Daily Globe (a sister company to the Bugle) in which he interviewed who he
believed was the serial killing criminal, the Sin Eater. Under pressure from
the police, Brock revealed his source as Emil Gregg, who was a compulsive
confessor claiming himself to be the Sin Eater, before Spider-Man revealed the
true identity of the criminal. In the film, Brock’s failure with what the
camera crew following him calls the “Bugle Incident” and “Emil Gregg case”
lurks in the background of the plot, and Brock does his best to avoid
addressing the elephant in the room. He even acknowledges the necessity of his
new situation as a ruined reporter for paying the bills, even at one point
asking, “Am I happy spewing bile and venom in a rag like the Examiner? Of course
not.”
 |
| Issues? Yeah, he has issues. Which one're ya looking to read? |
Though not a direct quote from the comics, Amazing Spider-Man #300 featured a
similar quote from Brock during a monologue: “I was forced to write venomous
celebrity exposés and ‘I was kidnapped by aliens’ drivel for scandal rags, just
to eke out a living.” Then, nearing the scene when Brock became Venom, Brock
escorted his camera crew into his bedroom, where on all the walls were news
clippings, the most prominent being front pages from the Daily Bugle with
pictures of Spider-Man and headlines reading “Sin Eater Body Count Now 10” and
“Globe Falsely Accuses Wrong Suspect”.
The Spiritual Ancestor
Yet as chock-full of geekgasmic comic insider
references as Lynch and Shankar squeezed into Truth in Journalism, this was only the tip of the iceberg. As
mentioned earlier, Lynch mentioned Man
Bites Dog as Truth in Journalism’s
spiritual ancestor. This is, perhaps, an understatement. Truth in Journalism not only pays homage to Man Bites Dog, but embodies the genre and mimics certain plot
points. Lynch and Shankar essentially set Man
Bites Dog in the Marvel comics universe and had their French-Belgian camera
crew follow around a detached, delusional journalist instead of a practical,
friendly serial killer. Both Brock and Benoît share their hair-trigger,
outgoing personalities, and both films follow a similar plotline to a point:
the camera crew follows their subject with a focus in exploring the nature of a
person in a particular line of work; the camera crew runs into issues with
funding part of the way through the film, and their subject offers to help them
with money; the group eventually runs into another competing camera crew; and
the main camera crew dies at the end of the film.
However, Truth
in Journalism deviates from the plot of its spiritual ancestor at several
points: when Eddie offers his crew financial assistance in the spirit of cinema
(both films also share the catchphrase “cineMA!” during their respective bar
scenes), the crew ends up declining his offer for the sake of integrity and,
secretly, to avoid becoming accessories to his possible criminal activities
because they don’t trust Eddie. In Man
Bites Dog, the crew became so caught up in Benoît’s crimes, they were
forced to accept his offer not only for their fear of him, but also because of
their Stockholm syndrome-like interest in his nature. When the crew and Eddie
run into another competing camera crew, instead of killing the competitors like
Benoît did, Eddie’s crew is almost killed by the competitors’ own subject, the
infamous Bullseye (played by Derek Mears) of Daredevil origins (who, funny
enough, is called “Ben” by his director in the scene…seeing the connection
yet?). And, finally, where Benoît and his crew are killed at the end of their
film by unseen gunmen, Eddie kills his crew as Venom when they decline his
funding—most probably out of paranoia.
 |
| This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship! |
It’s all in the Names
But wait! The insider jokes, geek references, and
Easter eggs don’t end there! On top of the healthy dose of faithfulness to the
source materials, the fake credits in the beginning of the film hold a few
layers of meaning on their own. Three names were given in the beginning
credits: Rémy Plissken, Pierre Balcomb, and Benoît Shankkar. Obviously, Rémy
and Benoît refer to Rémy Belbaux and Benoît Poelvoorde, both the cast and crew
of Man Bites Dog (as well as Lynch’s
son, Rémy, who’s named after the film maker); but probably lesser known is whom
Pierre Balcomb’s first name references: Pierre Vanbraekel, who played the
father of the child Benoît smothered in Man
Bites Dog.
Another obvious reference is Benoît Shankkar’s last
name, referring to the last name of Truth
in Journalism’s producer. Both the Plissken and Balcomb last names,
however, may be references to the film or crew’s less obvious inspirations:
Plissken referring to Snake Plissken, Kurt Russell’s character in the Escape from New York and Escape from L.A. films (the impact on Truth in Journalism and its characters
is lost on me as I’ve yet to see either film); and Balcomb possibly referring
to Florence Balcombe, wife of Dracula
author Bram Stroker, who is remembered for leading the destruction of most of
the prints of 1922’s Nosferatu, which
unofficially adapted her husband’s gothic vampire tale to the silver screen.
This last reference plays a particular part in the film, as Eddie’s character
was restored to his horrific personality as originally written in the comics,
as well as the similarities to the themes of Balcombe’s inquisition against
fraudulent profiteering and Eddie’s failure as a journalist for reporting
fraudulent evidence in the spirit of “making it big” as a reporter.
And Now for a Little Rant
After watching Truth
in Journalism a second…and maybe third, fourth, and—oh, who am I kidding?
I’ll be watching this on replay for a long time—well, you get the point, but
after rewatching Truth in Journalism
to catch all the Easter eggs and nods to fans Lynch and Shankar injected into
each scene, I was still a bit unsatisfied. What? I’m very picky when it comes
to Venom, don’t judge me! Anyways, Truth
in Journalism showcases, by far, the best interpretation of Eddie Brock in
a medium outside print. By far. This
isn’t to say Truth in Journalism
doesn’t need a few improvements to make it the best Eddie Brock and Venom film
of all time. (OF ALL TIME!)
For one, I, as many other Venom fans who watched this
can probably agree, believe Truth in
Journalism deserved a bigger budget for a better Venom design. A practical
Venom costume is completely possible, as Lynch and Shankar proved, but I
believe in a costume that could mix the practical with CGI. For instance, the Venom
head Kwanten sported when he became the murderous alter ego was very minimalist
and had a weird tight-lipped mouth seam across it the entire time until his
close-up when CGI kicked in to sport the classic mouth, complete with razor
sharp teeth and a wagging tongue. With a bigger budget, they could’ve given
Venom the classic open-mouth via CGI for more than a few seconds rather than
having that (no offense) goofy seam.
Also, I got their intention for making Venom more
alien by doing away with the big white spider logo wrapping around his chest,
but I felt that choice was also as much of an injustice to the character and
fans as Venom’s costume design was in Spider-Man
3 (which basically cheated and gave the black suited Spider-Man a mouth).
It was almost like Lynch and Shankar were attempting to distance the
character’s design from his origin with Spider-Man. I understand that the only
way a Venom movie would work is if it stood alone from the PG-13 rated wall
crawler, but who is the Joker without Batman?
 |
| "IT'S SLOBBERIN' TIME!!!" |
Another little geek issue I had with the film was
Brock’s New York accent (crucify me now). I know that at the time Amazing Spider-Man #300 was written and
when Brock was developing in the mind of David Michelinie, Brock most
likely—most probably—was meant to have a New York/Brooklyn accent. He was, at
the time, assumed to be an NYC native. That is, until we learned more about him
after his departure from New York in the pages of Venom: Lethal Protector. Michelinie revealed Brock to be a San
Francisco native instead—a detail just about no one would know outside the
fandom. So yes, I get that Lynch and Shankar were sticking close to the early
days of Brock in comics, but I would have preferred Kwanten to imitate a San
Franciscan accent, just to differentiate Brock more from the few New York
natives he talked to.
And as much as I liked Truth in Journalism framed in the style and story of Man Bites Dog, I would have also liked
the film to have its own feel. If Truth
in Journalism did, in fact, get the ball rolling at Sony for a Venom solo
film, not only should Venom keep his R rating, but the story should be unique.
Again, not so unique it distances itself from the source and Spider-Man’s
influence.
I know I set the bar high, but I did honestly, truly
enjoy the heck out of Truth in Journalism.
Lynch and Shankar really delivered to the fans an outstanding Venom film, even
if it’s not canon to either film franchises, and Kwanten surprisingly broadened
the scope of potential Brock actors. Seriously, I’ve been waging my own little
war against the piping masses with my pick of American Gladiator Lee Reherman
as Grace’s replacement over the fan-favorite wrestling all-star, Brock Lesnar
(I know he shares Eddie’s name, but he’s too buff for a journalist! At least
Reherman’s brawn is explainable, and can be easily toned down with CGI, Captain
America style). I thought I had given up on finding Grace lookalikes to fill
Brock’s gooey shoes, but Kwanten proved me wrong and beyond. My hat’s off to
the entire cast and crew of Truth in
Journalism, and with my official Venomaniac stamp of approval (as official
as my reputation in the fandom makes it, I suppose), I give this new cult
classic a 5 out of 5 and a kiss on the lips. No tongue, though.
Here’s looking forward to how Sony can meet this
monster!
Marvel had recently released their November 2013 comic book
solicitations, revealing that both Captain
Marvel and Venom had no planned
releases for the month. After an entire week of fans fearing and anticipating
information on the fate of both books, Marvel dropped the bomb on Venom readers that the series is
officially canceled after issue #42.
After Agent Venom’s deadly feud with the Savage Six in New York City,
Bunn moved Flash to Philadelphia to begin anew as the City of Brotherly Love’s
personal superhero. Taking on the profession of a high school gym coach, Flash
met Andrea “Andi” Benton, a student and apartment neighbor. When Jack
O’Lantern, former Spider-Man foe turned Venom arch nemesis, returns to make
Flash’s life a living hell, Andi and her father get caught in the crossfire.
Jack kills Andi’s father and almost kills her until Agent Venom intervenes and
saves her by extending a part of his symbiote onto her, creating Mania, the new
symbiote on the block. (This is reminiscent of how Eddie Brock used the Venom
symbiote to save his ex-wife, Ann Weying, inadvertently creating She-Venom.)
Perhaps Marvel decides to keep Flash as Venom after his book finishes.
Agent Venom’s popularity (and infamy amongst hardcore, old school Venom fans)
is unquestionable: he got a Marvel Select action figure before Brock/Venom did and
will do it again with the Marvel Legends line, and he’s even slotted for a
Season 3 TV debut in Disney XD’s Ultimate
Spider-Man cartoon (again, getting the jump on Brock for this series).
Maybe we’ll get the best of both worlds for the price of one new book.
Bunn teased Mania as a possibly permanent addition to the Marvel roster, and
the student/mentor dynamic between her and Agent Venom holds much potential.
Philadelphia could be Marvel’s new Gotham City, and what is Gotham without
Batman and Robin (and the Joker, whose shoes Jack O’Lantern can easily fill)?
Or this could really be it for our symbiotic Avenger and his companion.
We may not even get a new Venom book
until his eventual return to film in The
Amazing Spider-Man, considering the perpetual decline in the book’s sales
(we all know how Marvel tends to flood the market with new books and stories
based on upcoming blockbusters).
