This year, I expect to see several films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel Girl will be released in March, in Avengers End Game in April as well, followed by Spiderman: Far from Home and X-MEN: Dark Phoenix. Each of them is promising as excellent entertainment.
The last Marvel movie I saw on cinema was "Venom." I have not reviewed this work in my blog.
Venom is an alien came to the earth. It parasites human being, making him stronger. But it can no longer live on the earth without a host.
The protagonist is a journalist guy. He is eager to reveal the evil acts of gigantic companies. But he is fired from a news company because of his rude behaviors as well as a pressure of the company he was investigating. When he feels desperate, Venom contacts him to parasite his body. Then, the protagonist and Venom makes a strange alliance for survival.
Meanwhile, other aliens have come to the earth. One of the strongest aliens, named Riot, plans to overwhelm the human civilization to colonize the earth.
Venom is recruited by Riot. But Venom has become sympathetic with the protagonist through learning human's emotion and love from the protagonist. Therefore, Venom becomes against Riot to protect the earth from alien's invasion.
In this film, Venom is not a hero. It does not have humanity. Even it eats humans when starving. However, it depends on the protagonist's act for survival. This complex relationship between Venom and the protagonist is attractively described in this film.
It is unfortunate that this work is mimicking a comic book published in Japan many years ago. "Kiseiju," or "Parasyte," was written by Hitoshi Iwaaki in 1990s. The protagonist of this work is parasitized by a strange alien. The alien is very intellectual but not emotional at all. The protagonist and the alien share their life unwillingly at first. And they have to fight with other hostile parasites. The theme of Kiseiju is the sustainability of the earth environment. This work attracted public approval for its deep theme and realistic description. The animation series and real movie series were also released.
Wikipedia: Parasyte
Venom is not a bad movie at all. However, as a Japanese, I recognized Venom as a copy of Kiseiju, I am very sorry.
My personal rating: 3 (fair)
I know it's probably weird to comment on now, 2-3 years after this post, but I'd like to point out that Parasyte (Kiseiju) and Venom were ironically released around the same time, interms of manga and Marvel comics I mean. Parasyte was released to the Japanese public back in 1988 and Venom to the Marvel comics in 1984/1988 (1984 was the introduction of the symbiote Venom, but a full appearence didn't occur until 1988). Who knows how both a Marvel comic and a manga had the same general idea, but please don't accuse Venom of copying Parasyte (whose anime I also found enjoyable, although I've not yet finished it).
ReplyDeleteBut the notion of a hero human-monster pair up and the "dont eat people" kind of banter was decades earlier in Japan. As someone writes elsewhere Venom misses a lot of cool things that were developed in kiseijuu such as suggesting that normal humans are in a sense paracytic upon each other. Or that was the way I read the dating scene where it was noted that people dating can have completely different objectives.
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