Venom might not've managed to win over everyone just yet, but there are still reasons to be optimistic. How much caution people choose to exercise is at their own discretion, but with the film said to boast a hard 'R', horror genre approach, it's set itself apart from the competition as one to keep an eye on.
Make no mistake, those earlier Blade films were horror-driven to the core, with the latter Guillmero del Toro effort boasting all the fantastic makeup, set-design and visual effects you'd expect from that director's productions. All of those films did, however, take a heavy focus on action, and while no one would like to see a Blade film without shootouts, sword-fights and slow-mo set-pieces, there is an argument to be made that would see the film feature those elements sparingly.
A tense, atmospheric Blade film that ran with a horror vibe and used action intermittently would make for a fantastic and altogether more different kind of comic book film, and with a genre constantly criticised for ostensibly uniform productions, it's the perfect thing to keep the MCU heterogenous, compelling and more representative of the source-material itself.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
