Venom 2: 10 Mistakes Sony Must Avoid This Time
2. The Evil Mirror Image Villain
Oh boy, here we go again: this old trope.
Every hero - or, in this case, anti-hero - needs an enemy. What they don't need, and what we've seen far too many times, is an evil reflection of themselves. Iron Man and Iron Monger; The Hulk and the Abomination; Ant-Man and Yellowjacket; Black Panther and Killmonger. Add to that list artistic creativity and a sad lack of it.
It's no coincidence that some of comic book superheroes' greatest foes are polar opposites. Batman's morose fight for justice and the Joker's grinning chaos; Thor's sense of nobility and Loki's endless deceptions; Professor X's mutant/human dream and Magneto's mutant superiority ideal.
Enemies need conflict, otherwise they're not enemies, but if the only thing basically separating them is a bad temper, then the audience can't invest in or care about the story being told as much as they could do. Conflict is a goldmine for storytelling; our lives are populated by endless political, social, emotional, and ideological differences. Venom did touch on this with its slight foray into the ethics of scientific experimentation, but it left a lot to be desired.