Venom(2018)

[pluralsinmedia]

You know what movie was fun? Venom.

You know what movie had a plural protagonist? Thats right, Venom, the 2018 movie.

NOTE: This is not including the comics and other movies in which Venom features.

Spoiler Free Overview:

• Number of canon plural systems: Two
• System types: Fantasy physical possession
• Personhood: 8/10
• Dynamic: 9/10
• Narrative Sympathy: 9/10
• Consistency: 9/10
• Edge: 8/10
• Singlet Nonsense: 1/10
• Overall series grade: 8/10

Full Spoiler Overview Below Cut:

Plural Characters: Venom and -insert the villain here-. Some characters are briefly plural.

System types: Fantasy physical possession

Personhood: Venom and Eddie get equal treatment. The villain duo is less so, but we do not see much of them to begin with. Venom is a fully fleshed out person with wants and needs and so is Eddie. 8/10

Dynamic: A fantastically captivating and workable duo, they work exactly as how one would expect ‘two losers’ who have no idea what they are doing would work as they figure out how to work with each other. The talking out loud and getting caught at it is an especially nice touch. The villain is not focused on much but for what we see, for what they are they make large amounts of sense as well. 9/10

Narrative Sympathy: For a people-eating alien hijacking people’s bodies, Venom is given tons of narrative sympathy. He is given motive and care in a way most ‘murderer plural’ characters are not. The villain isn't really given any sympathy at all, so one point has been reluctantly knocked off. 9/10

Consistency: Venom and Eddie are consistently treated as explicitly plural throughout the movie. 9/10

Edge: Venom eats people. Its treated in a lighthearted and playful way, but this movie is extremely edgy in many ways. Eddie was not consensually possessed at first, and doesn’t like having a symbiote for a large portion of the movie, but over time learns to care for and love Venom. Its the possession angst and the murder and the eating people and it really is apparent. 8/10

Singlet Nonsense: Not really any, surprisingly. Eddie wants to stay plural at the end, he chooses to be Venom’s host willingly at the end. One of the rare times that someone gets to stay plural past the ending and willingly chooses to be plural. There is a lot of angst at the start though. 1/10

Possible upsetting tropes present: murderous alter, possession angst, nonconsensual body hijacking, superpowered evil side

Overall series grade: The consistently high scores of the positive categories and the low amount of singlet nonsense is lovely, but the edge is just too high to not knock a little bit off. 8/10