Carnage re-write
I'll add these all together into a single post and probably put it onto a03 and my artblog when I'm done with all of these, but for now we're going with this format.
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So for Eddie’s arc let’s have him learn that he needs to open up and allow himself to listen to and rely on other people. He can’t go around behind other peoples’ backs, and he can’t lie to the people in his inner circle. This will connect back to his flaws in the first film, where he tried to do everything himself his own way without considering how other people would feel about/react to that or reaching out to any of his contacts or allies for help or anything like that.
Venom meanwhile got hints of it in the first film, but we need to double down on it learning the value and meaning of community and friends and allies and all that. In theory Eddie has some of that, but he also tends to throw them away so if we can have Venom glom on and stick that’ll be good for them both in the long run (not a necessity for a good story, but I like when partners fill eachothers’ weak spots.
As for the relationship, we need them both to go on a journey where they realize that/why they care about eachother, and come to value that enough to compromise and work to find their balance.
They also both need to temper their impulses and instinctive responses to be able to think thing through and not just rush in guns blazing, though that might be a series arc and not just for the one movie.
Probably makes the main thrust of this movie something along the lines of: People and relationships are important and irreplaceable, but also hard work and compromise. They are well worth the effort of doing things right.
Which gives us some nice points to invert for our villain trio.
And speaking of villains, the villains and side-characters need arcs too.
In the film, Cletus wants to tell his story, wants to escape, wants to find his girlfriend, wants to get married, and wants to wreak havoc and kill people.
Scream wants to escape, wants to find her boyfriend, wants to get married, and wants to wreak havoc and kill people.
That’s all perfect for what the film wants to do (I have not read the comics and know nothing about scream, don’t at me. But also do, maybe you’ve got some ways to sell all of this better) 100%, no notes.
Where this breaks down is when it comes to Carnage itself. We get very little of its motivations, and we don’t get much between the symbiote and Casady, and even less between it and Scream. And what we do get isn’t compelling. It seems clear to me that they were trying to do a parallel to Eddie and Venom here, but it lacks the clarity and follow-through to really work.
Also AFAIK Carnage symbiote is supposed to be she/her and it’s a bummer that it’s not in the movie though I am always gonna be a “symbiotes are it/its first and anything else second” truther.
So to fix it:
Carnage is newly born straight off of the “we should be able to do what we want with no morals/consequences/limits” argument that Eddie & Venom were having and bases its initial personality off of that. Its motivation is that it wants to murder-party its way across the Earth. It sees Cletus as a good time and it is covetous of him as a host. It wants a match at least as good as Venom’s, and it wants its host to have things that make them feel hedonistically good, but it does not respect Cletus and it doesn’t care about Scream herself.
Cletus loves Scream. And he appreciates the abilities and possibilities that Carnage brings to the table and the way that their goals and desires align, but nothing more than that. People are a means to an end, to be used as he sees fit. To be manipulated and lied to without a thought. He doesn’t care to tell Scream about Carnage being its own being, all the better to bask in the glory of saving her and being powered up all by himself. He doesn’t care to explain to Carnage how the world works, or to reel it in, preferring to ramp it up for the carnage and chaos and pretend that it was all his idea.
Scream loves Cletus, but she is jealous and suspicious. She acts up whenever Cletus seems to have anyone else important in his life, and is even more dismissive of the people around them as little more than backdressing and playthings at best. She has skills and knowledge, and tries to use them to plan their future, but gets ignored by Cletus overruling her opinions and choices unless he is in a “yes, anything for you, everything you say will be done” mood. When she finds out about Carnage she is HECKIN jealous. How dare he have someone even closer to him than she is?
The marriage going from the two of them to the three of them is a peace offering without solving the underlying issues. And when Cletus ignores one of Scream’s choices – the officiant or somethign and Scream gets mad and Carnage slaps her for ruining their big day and then Cletus fights with Carnage for hurting his love, that is the crack that weakens them enough for Eddie and Venom (with backup) to eventually win the day. Their bond is stronger, they have put in the work, they have laid out a support network and talked about their needs, and in the end they will prevail because they have a healthier relationship for it.
This is of course diametrically opposed to how the actual movie played it, where Eddie and V got back together with no actual changes and out of desperation but the movie still kind of tried to imply that they won because their bond was better? Nah, you gotta earn that, on both sides, and we’d seen more problems on the protagonist side than the antagonists’ by far at that point.
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