Should Supervillains Have Their Own Solo Movies?
Around two weeks ago the first trailer for Venom 3: The Last Dance dropped and got me thinking about the why and how of this trend of making supervillains the sole star of a movie or in some cases like Venom a whole trilogy.
They Usually Won’t Work (Story Wise)
Don’t get me wrong some of these movies can be fun and maybe a good killer of time, but that’s about it! It really looks like in most of them the dark and greedy supervillain that was about to destroy the whole city(or sometimes the freaking world!), is now trying to just chill and leave all those ambitions behind him and just start a new life; or worse he’s trying to be a hero now and save the world!
Sony I’m Looking At You!!
To be fair, making a movie based on an established ip is not the worst idea in the world, that’s why a movie like Venom (2018) has grossed over $856 million dollars. So what’s the problem you ask? They are wasting the characters and their potential for future projects for a quick buck.
It Can Work When You Have A Plan
Take Loki, the god of mischief for example, started as the traitor who tried to take over Asgard and almost killed Thor and when failed, tried to take over earth with the Chitaury army. But they had a plan for him;from Thor: The Dark World to season two of Loki, his character evolved.
Another good example of this is The Joker 2019 movie. It’s not by any means a perfect movie but they knew what they wanted to do with Joker and they even set it up in a different universe (DC Elseworlds). And besides, the truth of the matter is that some characters are just easier to pull off in a standalone movie than others and with Joker, they succeeded.
Hobbs & Shaw, a Good Non-Superhero Example
I have my problems with this movie but the only point I want to mention is that they picked their poison with these characters and decided to turn them into heroes or at least anti-heroes. Keeping characters in a gray area is an art and you have to show why they are not heroes and also show why they aren't absolute monsters.
The Protagonist Can Be A Bad Guy
Although that’s true, there are certain elements in a superhero movie that kind of contradict the whole idea of a TRUE bad guy as the protagonist; add to that the limitations that a PG-13 rating brings, because as you know most superhero movies are PG-13.
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It might’ve looked like that I completely disagree with the idea of Supervillain solo movie, but honestly all it takes to make a decent movie about Venom for example, is to have a PLAN for the character and actually care about the journey he's going through and show how he deals with different events and consequences of his actions.