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Close your eyes now and answer this question: Does Carnage, the character from Marvel Comics, have a tongue? If your mind immediately jumps to Venom: let there be carnage, your answer would be yes. He has a substantial tongue, a big, meaty mass surrounded by fangs, much like Venom in this movie and in most of the comics.
But movie-Carnage moves away from the tongue-in-cheek horror of the comics, and I’m absolutely furious for it.
To be clear, no one else is crazy. I searched for “tongue of carnage” on Twitter (for those who don’t know: Twitter is a social network, like Instagram, but for people who are crazy) and found almost nothing except people who l ‘noticed, in the trailer, Carnage kills a guy by forcing his tongue down the guy’s throat. These people are thinking about it. We can talk about these thoughts another time.
My the concerns, however, are very pressing and overlapping. The first problem is aesthetic: if Carnage is just another alien creature with big jaws and a prehensile tongue, how can we understand that he is not only Red Venom? Also, Why Do any of these characters have languages to start with? Where the Mass comes from? How languages - which are, by the way, the creation of sentient goo-like symbiotic aliens that bind to humans like living costumes – job? If something or someone is eaten, who tastes it? Are they already used for kissing?
These are all deep questions about Venom Lore, the kind of roadblocks that can even arise long before a casual encounter. Venom the viewer begins to notice that, in the movies at least, these two monsters look a bit alike. So similar, in fact, that it might not even be worth watching them fight. Then I will have to ask myself if I am ready to die on this particular goo hill.
Can you imagine “They are completely different,” I say in this scenario. “Carnage is a terrifying mass murderer with an alien costume that allows him to transform his limbs into battle axes!” The other party will likely respond with “yes, that sounds extremely different from the other mass murderous human-alien goo hybrid, thank you.” So I’m going to get agitated and point out that “You DON’T UNDERSTAND, Carnage is her SON, haven’t you heard of GENETICS”. Nobody really wins here, so please take my word for it when I say that what you’re really watching is a story about Venom’s baby assassin, and let the curiosity or morbid revulsion that results guide your decision-making. Either works for my needs.
(Note: I am aware that there is some representations of Carnage with a tongue. However, none have been as durable or final as Mark Bagley’s definitive design. He co-created Carnage, so his version, for all intents and purposes, is canon.)
Now, a narrative complaint. Since cinema, like comics, is a visual medium, then every part of a character’s design tells a story. What is Carnage’s tongue for here? Why this derogation from the canon? Do two alien symbiotes with unusually expressive tongues in the same movie mean they’re going to kiss each other? Is that why Carnage is murdering a guy with his tongue (don’t be mean) in the trailer? Does he just want to find a compatible smooch partner? Is his murderous rampage just an accident, a byproduct of a lonely alien looking for love? Maybe he’ll find it in Venom, right? It would be a good resolution.
Plus, the memes would be amazing.
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