What I Love Most About the Venom Symbiote in Insomniac's Spider-Man 2

[Winter]

Something that's always bugged me about pretty much every adaptation of the Venom Symbiote arc is the lack of Horror to it. Often the idea of the story that Peter is being altered by the symbiote via it feeding on his more negative emotions is, at most, just something that briefly disturbers Peter and a few enemies and his loved ones are usually more worried about him.

But in the second Insomniac game it's played for all the horror they can get out of it. Let's take, for example, when the Symbiote takes Peter's body for a joyride and hunts down villains.

In terms of adaptations we've only seen this done in Spectacular Spider-Man and the scene in question was very much an action scene meant to look cool rather then anything terrifying. Peter kicks the the asses of all members of the Sinister Six and none of them are really any worse for wear.

It's still unnerving but you don't really get the sense why this is a bad thing until the end of the fight where the symbiote goes to kill one of the villains but is quickly stopped by captain Stacy.

In SM2 the horror is shown by the Symbiote going full monster mode as it takes control over Peter's body and goes on a rampage. This is all done at night during a storm and we play most of this mission as Mary Jane so the horror of this mission is played for all it's worth.

I'm in the minority in that I actually liked the missions where we play as MJ and Miles in the first game as it helped show what these threats looked like to the regular people of New York. And here we get to see what Peter under the full control of the symbiote looks like and it's every bit as terrifying as one would imagine. MJ is a badass in her own right but in the end she's still a regular human being with no powers and at the end she's trapped with a monster that has taken control of the man she loves and it has one thing on it's mind, kill MJ.

This is the first time in the series where the Symbiote is a threat not to Peter's enemies but those he loves and the fact that after this he's sides with the monster makes it all the more terrifying and tragic. Peter doesn't see anything wrong with the monster he has with him and wants to keep it at the cost of his humanity.

This is what the Venom films and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 SHOULD have done instead of playing the symbiote up as a joke and removing what made it such a threat. This isn't an adversary who wants to destroy the city this is an enemy that Peter lets in and one that comes to know him better then anyone else because it was inside Peter's head.