Film Theory: Venom's SECRET Weapon! (Venom vs Carnage)

i am inevitable i am iron man hello internet welcome to film theory where we are team theorists speaking of if you want to meld into our symbiote that's now absorbed over 10 million subscribers hit that red button down below we'd be glad to have you merge into the theorist family hey you press the button how you feel about that one venom outstanding now let's fight all the heads off follow them up at the corner no we will not bite off their heads okay maybe just one you know it absolutely takes a village to make the kind of quality content that you've come to expect at the rate that you crave it and that's why i can really appreciate solid teamwork you know who else can appreciate solid teamwork eddie brock and is way too close for comfort buddy venom how's that for a seamless segue ladies and gentlemen if you think your roommates have been a little too close for comfort over the last year lockdown just imagine how much worse it would be if they actually lived inside of you and then you know just randomly decided to consume whole human heads in one bite on that note can i just digress for a second here where are those heads going are they going into eddie's stomach like how is he digesting a full human skull it's not like venom has a physical structure that contains or digests these sorts of things he's using eddie's body as a host so i don't know probably a theory better suited for another day also since i'm on this whole digression might as well include this too did you know that he's eating the brains so that way he doesn't go insane yeah it's another weird detail from the comics if the symbiotes don't eat human brains on a regular basis they go insane either that or they gotta eat chocolates kind of gives new meaning to those snickers commercials you're not you when you're hungry anyway after being bounced around the release calendar more times than black widow bouncing off of hvac systems it's finally time for venom 2 to be released into theaters with the big bad being none other than well venom himself he's not really a big hero here let's be honest dude kind of sucks but the even worse villain this time around is serial killer cletus cassidy and his personal symbiote carnage it's not symbiote right i know they say that in the movie let me just double check symbiote yeah symbiote i don't know who says symbiote so in true film theory fashion i wanted to take a look at who should win this battle not who will win because we all know the reality of franchise-based storytelling dictates that our title character will have to continue in some form but rather who should win like if there really were two real-life symbiotes modeled after venom and carnage and we stuck them in a fight against each other who would come out on top and this question is pretty darn interesting since at first glance the two symbiotes seem to be pretty much pallet swapped versions of each other but when you look closer there's actually a lot of differences in the way that they function the ways that they interact with their hosts and the way that they view the world which would give an advantage to one over the other in a 1v1 brawl so today we're looking at the comics the movies and the real worlds of science and psychology to determine in a real world battle of carnage vs venom who would reign supreme for those of you who skipped the venom movie because it wasn't officially in the mcu yet or weren't fans of comic books from the super edgy totally rad 90s era let's quickly go over the relevant factoids for our venom carnage battle today venom is truly two different entities sharing a body first we have the journalist eddie brock he's a human nothing extraordinary to say about him secondly though we have ourselves an alien symbiote that infects eddie bonding with his nervous system this symbiote is what allows brock to transform into the black behemoth known as venom on the other side we have carnage though we haven't seen too much of carnage in the movies yet the story in the comics goes that while breaking eddie brock out of prison the venom symbiote creates an asexually produced offspring that ends up finding the serial killer cletus cassidy as its host in the movie it looks like cletus might actually bite eddie and get a piece of the symbiote that way i have tasted blood before and that is not it the interesting piece here though is that rather than bonding with cassidy's nervous system this new symbiote instead bonds with cletus's blood thus creating the red-looking monster called carnage and you see this subtle difference actually gives us our first major basis for comparison a neural connection in venom versus a sanguineous connection or blood connection with carnage while on paper that might seem like an arbitrary distinction it actually ties directly into both of these symbiotes potential strengths and weaknesses venom being linked directly to brock's nervous system gives him a solid scientific reason to have stronger faster perception and reflexes much akin to peter parker's spider sense venom's connections with the nervous system would also give him advanced control over the body and therefore better precision in his movements remember in a fight strength isn't everything accuracy and control are gonna matter a lot so venom is actually working with a major advantage here as well however venom's direct ties into the human nervous system are a massive double-edged sword because it also comes with a huge set of disadvantages as we've seen in both the comics and movies venom is very weak to sound and sonic based attacks sure this originated as just a weakness concocted for a fictional character but a real life symbiote like this would scientifically have a weakness to intense perceptual inputs a boosted nervous system like the one that venom gives to brock would in fact result in sound being amplified and any weaknesses that symbiotes naturally had to sonic activity would likely be boosted as well carnage uses screech it is super effective this also opens up venom to all kinds of nervous system based weaknesses rapid changes in temperature bright flashing lights overwhelmingly bad smells these are all things that are unpleasant to normal humans and could ultimately the heightened awareness of venom let me be clear while these things might not be all that effective in the comics out in the real world battle against the symbiote connected to your nerves it's suddenly gonna matter a lot carnage on the other hand is gonna get away with a lot more here because he's connected to the blood his weaknesses are much fewer and far between blood isn't going to be weak to things like sound or flashing lights because blood has nothing to do with human perception it's no weaker to sound than any other molecule in the body and well that's just me running an analysis on what the real world science would look like this actually holds true in the comics surprisingly enough all the symbiotes start as weak to sonics to some extent not that sort of sonic carnage eventually loses that vulnerability now admittedly it has less to do with his blood connection and more to do with him being granted extra abilities through the powers of ancient magic whatever it is i'm just here to say that the science actually supports his powers as seen in the comics so if a blood connection protects carnage from most of the things that would harm venom then what is he gonna be vulnerable to maybe heat that's traditionally one of the other classic symbiote weaknesses in the comics and yeah you can definitely heat the blood up enough for it to boil and degrade but neurons are gonna be just as susceptible to those high temperatures so venom would be equally at risk and again in the comics we see in the web of venom that dark carnage is no longer susceptible to fire how about electricity this is still carnage's main weakness in the comics and yeah electricity would absolutely hurt red blood cells but again it would also affect venom considering that the neurons of eddie's body literally run on electrical pulses one of the only things that carnage seems weak to that venom wouldn't be is probably the least exciting thing possible blood-based illnesses blood can be weak to itself as is the case with proliferative blood disorders like leukemia or autoimmune neutropenia where blood cells attack other blood cells but for as much as blasting carnage with radiation until he has cancer sounds like the sort of solution we'd come up with for a film theory on how to kill carnage i'm gonna venture a wild guess that it's not gonna be all that helpful in a battle against venom i mean if the movie does go in that direction maybe we'll just pretend that this was a prediction theory all along but i'm not gonna be holding my breath on that one more likely this movie's gonna come down to a cgi slugfest in the dark with some kind of sky beam in the background so carnage being blood-based rather than neuron based has fewer weaknesses so then how are his strengths well he might not be as fast or reactive as venom but he will be stronger increased blood flow is associated with muscle growth because red blood cells deliver oxygen to working tissues more oxygen means more work that translates to stronger muscles and also more stamina it also means that unlike venom carnage in real life should have the ability to regenerate you see with human neurons what you see is kind of what you get if something gets damaged in the nervous system it's pretty much gone for good unless it gets actively repaired or replaced their lifespan is your lifespan blood cells though those things are a dime a dozen nearly two million red blood cells in the adult human body die every second in fact your body makes 3.8 million cells every second and most of them are red blood cells so an organism that attaches to the blood is going to be much more difficult to completely wipe out because he's constantly multiplying and regenerating himself and ironically enough all of this actually matches with carnage's comic lore again it is weird the coincidence here the comics come up with all these wacky reasons to explain the symbiote's powers they're aliens they've been affected with magic they've been attached to spider-man's radioactive body at some point whatever but in truth all of it actually ties back to the real world science in one way or another we see in the comics that carnage unlike venom does have regenerative powers he does tend to be depicted as stronger he does have incredible stamina heck even his comic ability to create weapons from his own body and launch them makes more sense for a character that's associated with blood we've got a lot of extra blood cells to spare why not grab a few of them form them into an axe and launch them at your nearest web slinger venom wouldn't be able to do stuff like that because the cells he's working with are limited in number and highly fragile so looking at just the bonding behavior this one is a clear victory for carnage no question from a physical standpoint the blood bond has many more advantages and fewer weaknesses but there's still one other angle that i want to pursue here and that's the psychological component and it all boils down to one line we are venom the symbiote and eddie are working together as two separate entities within one body cletus cassidy on the other hand always refers to himself as a singular entity i am carnage who then wins the psychological battle one singular entity or two sharing the same body researchers in the psychology world use a lot of different models to predict human behavior and one of the most popular currently is called the big five or ocean model an acronym for its five metrics openness conscientiousness extroversion agreeableness and neuroticism with advent of social media these metrics have exploded into popular use as data engineers design automated tests to extract ocean metrics from your social media data and predict your online activities that is no joke that is a real thing these metrics actually serve as the basis for many of those terrifying algorithms that seem to know exactly what you're thinking and how to advertise directly to you so yeah there's an actual reason i'm bringing this up anyway as you might expect certain metrics correlate with certain kinds of success and also show your ability to work together i want to focus specifically on the conscientiousness metric which is often associated with success in different kinds of workplaces on one end of the conscientiousness scale are the efficient and organized people while on the other side sit the extravagant or careless people and mind you these aren't my terms they are the official terms used in this model and they're designed to be non-judgmental though i would argue that the word careless really feels judgy to me anyway in jobs that don't require a high level of technical knowledge conscientiousness highly correlates with success people who are organized efficient and goal-oriented have a much higher probability of success in these jobs than the extravagant or careless people who tend to get bored or frustrated overwhelmed or distracted before the job's done cletus cassidy is extravagant to say the least he's a violent serial killer and not like the dexter type who meticulously plans out his crime one of the reasons the police didn't catch cassidy until he had committed at least 11 murders or 23 by his own count was because his crimes were patternless cassidy doesn't kill for a political reason or some deep repressed traumatic reason he killed because he wanted to he didn't see the point in life totally random carnage his symbiote is also extravagant actually it's probably better to say that he doesn't come packaged with a solid identity as we hear in the spider-man cartoon i get to be like brock similar but different once you bond it will reflect your hatred for humanity your lust for destruction contrast cletus with eddie who is much more organized though he's definitely more in the middle of the conscientiousness spectrum we see that eddie is more than capable of organizing investigations into powerful people he's goal driven he stops at literally nothing to get his questions to carlton drake at the beginning of the first film resulting in his loss of a highly skilled job eddie has much more perseverance when presented with a challenge and that challenge isn't just carnage it's also venom who is definitely more on the careless and extravagant end of the conscientiousness spectrum 2018's venom was all about eddie brock and his symbiote learning to deal with each other eddie feels out of control at first and fights against the symbiote's influence it's only when eddie voluntarily lets the symbiote back into his body towards the end of the movie that venom truly achieves his full power the extremely powerful but chaotic venom succeeds in part thanks to eddie brock's psychological profile reigning him in being more strategic and focusing venom's incredible power so while they're certainly operating a separate individual sharing one body their strengths and weaknesses ultimately balance each other out as opposed to the chaotic extravagant cletus being made more extreme by the equally chaotic symbiote what's more eddie also gets the advantage of two brains because you know what they say two heads are better than one and as it turns out that it's scientifically proven as the report optimally interacting minds shows not really going to do a deep dive into it here because it's not really that exciting but the tl dr is that yeah two people communicating with each other and working together does ultimately lead to better results than one person working alone so for eddie and venom who have had some time together to work things out communication is gonna come as second nature so venom's real advantage over carnage isn't physical it's actually psychological carnage has nearly all of eddie's strengths beat and his weaknesses are much less likely to come into play than eddies are but eddie has the personality for the job and the ability to work with his teammate to achieve something greater than carnage can achieve on his own in the most ironic twist of all a battle between two super powerful blobs of alien goo is ultimately decided by the puny humans that are wearing the suits but hey that's just a theory a film theory and cut you

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 3,884,874

Keywords: venom, carnage, venom 2, venom 2 trailer, venom 2 let there be carnage, let there be carnage, venom carnage, venom 2 carnage, venom 2 scene, venom vs carnage, venom carnage fight, marvel, film theory venom, film theory venom 2, film theory spiderman, venom 2 post credit scene, venom 2 spiderman, venom 2 spiderman scene, film theory, matpat, film theorists, venom 2 breakdown, venom 2 easter eggs, venom let there be carnage, spiderman no way home, venom versus carnage

Id: afCRuGS5zJo

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021

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