the spider-man complex — spitting venom
Hey dork,
A lot has happened! Again! Our lives and this game are a carousel of emotional events and character progression, with the only question being what brings genuine catharsis and what is just painful. Still, as mentioned, some things are eternal: love, determination to keep getting better, and Spider-Man 2 pissing us off.
We’ve finally reached the story’s big swings. Swings that come one after another after another after another after another, and most are foul balls. I’ve been itching to start screaming about the black suit arc and Venom (in name only) since the start of this series, so I’m grateful for the opportunity to make like a symbiote by a church bell and screech. No feelings are eternal, and neither is the corruption of Peter Parker. God knows there are too many arcs, too many villains, too many attempted themes going on in this short game to possibly spend time on just one. I’m sad to answer one of your questions quickly by saying that no, the story does not get better — it, as we’re both finding, gets a LOT worse.
So, the symbiote. A parasitic alien organism that protects its host in return for having a living being to bond with and stay alive. Symbiotes are not inherently antagonistic — they’re beings with free will. When bonded with a strong host that can support their existence, their aim is to stay bonded, since they can’t survive on their own forever; to convince the host to keep them around, they do their best to help the host achieve whatever they desire. In Peter’s case, it’s to help him fight crime and use his newfound power responsibly. In Eddie Brock’s case, it’s to get revenge on Spider-Man for ruining his life (a desire shared by both the symbiote and Eddie). In Harry’s case, it’s… well I’m not sure actually, I’ll try to figure that one out later.
When the symbiote begins to take things too far, such as taking control of Peter’s body while he sleeps to continue doing good while he physically can’t, its genuine aim is to help Peter be a better Spider-Man. The personality shift in Peter isn’t the result of an outside evil force deliberately poisoning his worldview — it’s due to his hero complex being validated by being able to do his job better than usual and inflating his otherwise relatively humble ego to higher degrees thanks to his increased strength and new abilities. The core of the addiction allegory that the symbiote is frequently based around (confirmed as the intent in this game through interviews with Lowenthal and director Intihar) is that Peter does become a better Spider-Man with the suit, but it's his own growing selfishness, insecurities and dependence on the suit that leads him down a dark path and makes him a worse Peter Parker. It’s all the power, none of the responsibility. Obviously, the hole in this allegory is that real addiction doesn’t have a positive aspect — drink and drug dependence doesn’t make anyone a better anything — so it isn’t perfect, but it’s an intended allegory, at least.
For me, the best way to describe the symbiote is a bitter, toxic ex. The symbiote loves Peter, loves helping him and being a part of him, and so when it’s ripped away after Peter realises it’s using his body without consent (not an aspect discussed much!) and his enjoyment of it is hurting those around him, it builds resentment towards its former lover until it turns to venom. There’s pretty much no limit to how intense the symbiote’s desperation to cling onto its lover can get, too — in Donny Cates’ Venom (2018), the symbiote manipulates Eddie’s mind into believing he has developed cancer and thus can’t live without it in a last ditch effort to stop Eddie abandoning it. Aliens be crazy.
Spider-Man 2 is, like a few contemporary adaptations of this story, founded on a fundamental misunderstanding: the symbiote in this game inherently corrupts its host. The frequency of this misunderstanding, I think, is due to most people’s reference points for the black suit arc being the 90s animated series and Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. In those stories, the symbiote gradually corrupts Peter and doesn’t just “amplify characteristics of its host” as Connors explains in the movie, but specifically “enhances aggression” and, for lack of a more nuanced take, turns Peter evil by itself. While the other characteristics do show up amplified, like Peter’s goofy ass dancing in the street because that’s what Peter thinks being cool is, it’s primarily just a binary corrupting force.
In this game’s story, the symbiote attempts to attach itself to Peter on first contact, detecting a stronger host than the otherwise deathly ill Harry. Upon Peter’s death, the symbiote detects an opportunity to save the day and resurrect him, with the condition of taking over his body. New strength, new goopy powers and new anger become his defining traits: still saving lives, yes, but without as much care — like some kind of Lethal Protector. That said, there’s still some of the old Spider-Man under the new black mask; the “I’m fresh out of honey!” line in the EMF is one of the best quips this iteration of Peter has come out with. The corruption really sets in when Peter starts to isolate from those around him, those who want to help him and the city, because he increasingly only trusts himself to be a hero. He doesn’t just find use in the suit, he LOVES it. It makes him a better Spider-Man, as he insists.
The problem here is that all of this character change — Peter becoming more aggressive, more selfish, more isolated, more insecure about Miles' existence and powers, less trusting, his hero complex rocketing up to ridiculous levels — isn’t a result of just having more power and taking on all the responsibility himself; it’s the symbiote actively poisoning him. When Peter asks “I wonder if Harry really needs the suit”, it’s not Peter himself distancing himself from his apparent best friend and losing any and all care for his wellbeing, it’s just the symbiote telling him to abandon his friend so that he keeps it on. When he yells at Harry that he should just “pop some more pills and say what you’re really feeling”, and to MJ that “I’m the hero here, not you!”, it’s not Peter letting the selfish desires he’s swallowed down since he let Uncle Ben die out of their cage. It’s just the symbiote corrupting him, again. Hell, the symbiote starts speaking in Peter’s head and telling him to outright kill his enemies in Tony Todd’s booming voice. By making the symbiote an inherently corrupting, evil force, Peter is robbed of any character complexity that could be created by giving him a simple power boost and seeing how he handles it. The game isn’t subtle about this being the case either: the black suit changes from its original form to the more Venom-like Symbiote Suit as it corrupts Peter over time. The screeching monster that chases MJ through Queens under cover of dark is no longer Peter Parker, so why should I treat it as if it is? When Miles is finally forced to fight Peter to snap him out of it, biting back at Peter’s claim that he’s “finally everything everyone needs me to be” with “Yeah? You don't even answer my calls anymore, man!”, Miles isn’t fighting his fellow Spider-Man and calling out his failures as a friend and mentor, not really — he’s just punching an alien.
You mentioned that the Mysterio sublot attempts to ask if good people can actually be good, and the way the symbiote is handled is an indirect answer to this: yes. Peter Parker can only ever be good. The black suit has to be inherently evil because otherwise, poor Peter Parker would actually be responsible for any of his selfish acts or impulsive mistakes, and we can't have that. How fucking boring. When Peter does finally rip the suit off of himself in what should be a cathartic moment, I’m just annoyed; I guessed that Peter would just apologise to MJ and Miles, blame the suit once it’s off and be back to his usual selfless and perfect self immediately. I was very, very disappointed to be proven right. You want lasting consequences, Micaela? People hating Spider-Man for valid reasons? We’re gonna have to look elsewhere, sadly. Spider-Man 2 is not interested in complexity in its heroes.
But with it off of Peter, the symbiote has to go somewhere, right? And since it was teased back in 2018, there’s only one host it could be: Harry. I’ll inevitably have more to say about him and his actions in the next letter once the final act kicks into gear, but for now, I have something that I promise is less surface-level than it sounds: I really, really wish Venom wasn’t Harry. Now, this isn’t inherently because it isn’t Eddie Brock — I think there has been interesting stuff done with other hosts of the symbiote like Flash Thompson and Mac Gargan in the past — but at the same time, Harry just does not work. Venom, the character, the concept, is founded on a resentment towards Spider-Man. The symbiote hates Spider-Man for abandoning it. Eddie hates Peter Parker for ruining his career (for outing his journalistic misreporting, which Eddie is too selfish to accept as his own fault) and making a fool of him at the Bugle. Harry in this story has no good reason to be Venom. The black suit has not corrupted him up until this point, seemingly just acting as an exosuit that heals his deathly Oshtoran Syndrome with no side effects other than cool goo superpowers. It’s only once the symbiote corrupts Peter — because we have to have the black suit arc with Peter turning eviiiiilllll — that the symbiote corrupts Harry in the same way.
But what the hell is his motivation here? Peter had the symbiote for a few days at most, it’s not as if he doomed Harry by keeping it forever. Spider-Man has literally never done anything negative towards Harry. The reasoning of the symbiote being abandoned by Spider-Man is there, sure, but that’s not enough. What makes Venom work is, shockingly, the symbiosis: the sheer power of these two beings’ separate hatred towards one man who did them wrong coming together to form something worse. Hell, in their introduction, Venom refers to themselves as such in reference to venom being “what I’m paid to spew out these days” after Eddie lost his job at the Bugle. Venom is, in their words, “the innocent you ruined.” How in god’s name — and while we’re here, this story also loses the important layer of the devout catholic Eddie seeing himself as a chosen messiah with the suit after gaining it during prayer in a church — is Harry an innocent that Peter ruined? And so, it all loops back around: the Venom symbiote is inherently evil not just because of a misunderstanding of what the symbiote is due to modern adaptations being more known in the zeitgeist, but because Insomniac shot themselves in the foot by attaching the symbiote to Harry in 2018 with no idea for what his motivation could possibly be. No villain motivation? Don’t worry about it! The goop’s evil! Problem solved!
What gets to me so much here is the lack of consequences towards Peter’s relationships after his stint isolating and damaging those around him. He doesn’t have to make amends, he can just blame something else and move on. The evil force moves on to another innocent, shifting the problem away from him entirely. Nothing matters. Yet we reap what we sow. We make emotional impulse decisions that are not always to our betterment. We say things that can change relationships in just a few syllables, being honest in our fears and desires and feelings — it’s almost always better to be honest, but it’s never without lasting effect. No choice exists in a vacuum. You’re right: it’s hard to say something, mean it and act on it. But we have to. That’s what responsibility is all about, right? I can’t help thinking of one of Peter’s last, character-defining lines in the first game of this trilogy: “You do what you think is best, Doc. It’s all any of us can. Even when it hurts like hell.” There’s only love. There’s only moving through and trying your best.
I’m conscious of the fact that I haven’t mentioned Miles outside of his clash with Peter, and it’s truthfully because I couldn’t care less about his lack-of-arc in this game, and evidently neither can Insomniac. I’m so blinded by my hatred for how one of Spider-Man’s most interesting and complex arcs has been so thoroughly decimated, rushed and simplified that I spared no thought for the other Spider-Man; again, much like Insomniac’s writers. Maybe this is an example of me finally letting myself be angry, if you can call being critical of the writing of a Spider-Man game a valid reason to be. So, following all of the venom I’ve just spat, I’m very, very excited to hear from you again. What are your thoughts on the fleeting black suit arc in this game? Does Harry work at all as Venom? Why is Insomniac allergic to consequences? What is making amends if not, as Peter seems to think it is, just apologising once and blaming outside factors? And why in the fuck did the writers insist on the black suit being an addiction allegory if they were going to attempt it with so little thought or care?
Yours in rage,
Ashley
P.S. I just remembered, in checking over this letter, that Venom fought and killed Kraven right after his introduction. I genuinely completely forgot that happened. I think that says something.
Hey Newyorkaboo,
It’s cathartic to read you tear into this game. For you to put all that Spider-Man knowledge to good use explaining why Harry Venom, who is separate from Venom itself as a character in my mind, completely betrays the original intent of the black suit arc as a whole. I do love the idea that the Symbiote is a jealous ex, something deeply in love with Peter and his motivations but cast aside for bringing his worst qualities to the fore. Peter does become an ego driven crime fighting machine with the Symbiote’s aid, and to the game’s (minimal) credit, this desire to be a better Spider-Man comes from a deeply rooted insecurity that has nestled into Peter since the events of the first game, particularly the death of Aunt May: he isn’t enough. He can’t hold a job, he can’t afford May’s house, he can’t move on from her death, he can’t balance his private life with MJ with the demands of the city. Peter lost his touch as Spider-Man long before Devil’s Breath infected the city. Miles showing up, a younger, more electric, capable man than Peter ever was as a high schooler, is both a blessing and a curse to Pete. The Symbiote lets him dull that critical voice in his head and finally be the Spider-Man he’s always meant to be. It’s hard to give that up.
Substances offer the same relief that Peter feels to addicts everywhere. It certainly offered them to me. When you first told me that the creatives behind Spider-Man 2 intended the Symbiote to be a drug addiction allegory, I laughed because it textually fails at even considering the idea. Like most things in the narrative, several emotional and character beats are missing that would showcase that Peter feels different under the influence of the Symbiote. All we get is moments that he feels more powerful and more capable. He never mentions getting high off the power, never seems to need greater and greater doses to achieve the same thing, never experiences a withdrawal if he isn’t kicking ass. There’s another version of the game that punishes players for using the Symbiote Surge — a crazy combat mode that lets an invincible Peter smash his enemies to pieces with a pleasant, crunchy flair. Imagine Peter staggering for a little after the Surge, as if he was actually coming down off a drug. Slower actions, powers depleted rather than refilled. This would place a true value judgement on using the Symbiote Surge only when it’s necessary, challenge players to go apeshit only if they’re capable of handling the fragility of the consequences. It’s how I imagine venom works for Bane: go bananas now, deal with the consequences later. That’s how you let gameplay really dig into addiction. But Insomniac didn’t do that.
It wasn’t until I read your letter, actually, that I got a little more what the developers intended with this metaphor. Drugs and alcohol actually can be a benefit to someone when they start using them, that’s their magic. If I’m struggling to clean up my room or get some work done, a bump of cocaine could do wonders for my productivity, or adderall at least if I wanted to stay legal. If I’m anxious and can’t focus, there’s plenty of downers (prescribed and otherwise) that can help settle me into my skin and make a previously unmanageable situation feel okay. The problem, really, isn’t that drugs and alcohol don’t make you feel better: it’s that addicts build up a greater and greater tolerance to them. Suddenly one bump isn’t enough, a whole bag is needed. One pill becomes three. One puff becomes an uncountable amount as I’m ripping two weed vapes every few minutes hoping to lose enough awareness that I slip off into some secret third state of consciousness that isn’t awake or asleep. Drugs and alcohol gradually transform from “a little something to take the edge off” into the edge itself, a necessity. Addicts believe they’d die without them, and we would lie, steal, cheat, and potentially hurt to get just one moment of peace.
Drugs have positives, it’s just they spoil into negatives fast. It’s an allergy, and we can’t stop even if we wanted to. The addiction rings in our head like Venom’s low, booming voice: More. Please. Now. You need it or you’ll die. Just one more. The Symbiote standing in for addiction is not actually as far-fetched as I initially believed. My drinking turned me into someone unrecognizable, someone cruel and selfish and uncaring to those around me. It didn’t matter so long as I had a drink in my hand and a joint in my pocket. The person I hurt most, obviously, was myself. That I’m alive doesn’t mean I’m free of scars or painful memories of moments where I lost myself. And my behavior was my own. It was motivated by my addiction, influenced by the voice in my head, but it was me screaming at people, my arms bleeding, my mouth drinking and smoking. The people I’ve hurt do need amends, deep long conversations where I take accountability for my actions and promise to act differently from here on out. The thing that a lot of people don’t understand about addiction is that substance use is a symptom, not the sickness. Those festering wounds of self-loathing, fear, control, jealousy, envy, selfishness, are all me, and they exist with or without the substance. Drinking simply helped me ignore them for a little, before magnifying them into something unrecognizable. It lied to me, much like a certain goopy alien. The real work isn’t in remaining sober, it’s in crafting a better life for myself that I previously couldn’t imagine.
It is infuriating that Spider–Man 2 seems deeply uninterested in holding our heroes to account for their worst moments. When Miles almost lets civilians die to a boat propeller while attempting to keep Li from Kraven’s clutches, he’s lightly slapped on the wrist. Reminded about responsibility. And then his mentor, the one person whom he can trust to understand that difficulty of choosing vengeance over protection, vanishes. That Miles doesn’t act out as much, isn’t blindsided by his rage when he finally confronts Li in a gladiator arena, is a missed opportunity. After a boring fight — one of many in a sequence that starts with Kraven as Peter and builds into about five banal bosses in a row — Miles doesn’t get close to killing Li, let alone actually being angry at him. He instead, anticlimactically, ejects Li out of the arena, saving his life. Their little jaunt inside Miles’s noggin, which was supposed to be a Scarecrow–esque memory sequence confirming his deepest insecurities, somehow motivates Miles into being a better man, someone his dad would be proud of. It’s the narrative once again jumping from A to G with no stops between. Miles is uniformly good, even when he’s troubled. It’s an extremely boring viewpoint that poisons the narrative as a whole.
Peter, as you mention, blames the Symbiote for his being an asshole. He evades responsibility for his insecurities and how, being a superpowered individual, his hang-ups have major consequences for his loved ones and the city as a whole. Peter ignores Miles outright, stranding him alone in what should be a sea of anger and confusion. He forces MJ to push her own interests, desires, and worries aside to let him superhero around; he places the economic burden of their household on her Daily Bugle-employed shoulders (something we are told, really, more than shown). And he does forsake Harry for a secondary cure that we are repeatedly told Norman is close to developing rather than even considering giving the suit back. (Spoiler: the new cure is the Goblin Serum, and no, Norman never actually gives Peter any indication that it’s anywhere near complete, just that it’s being worked on feverishly by Good Dad Norman Osborn.) When Pete is finally free of the Symbiote he offers flat, blanket apologies to everyone without actually taking accountability for a single thing he did while “under the influence” of the alien. He’s Peter. He’s a Good Guy. A Great one perhaps. He can’t be complex, lest we think he’s a person, not a paragon of goodness.
Here is where I loop back into agreeing with you that the Black suit arc is, like the rest of the game’s narrative, handled clumsily and carelessly. But, again, I’m not sure what I expected. It’s very much a “dead dove, do not eat” situation. The Insomniac story team clearly fluked into one of the best Spider-Man stories of the modern era with Spider-Man (2018), a narrative full of accountability as Peter fails to meet the moment time and time again. Spider-Man 2 has problems that plagued Spider-Man: Miles Morales — perhaps one of my least favorite, most unearned stories in all of comics media — on a larger scale. Any time the story feigns at something interesting, it shies away, allergic to tension or character complexity. Our heroes should be fundamental pillars of light in dark times, apparently. And our villains must be everything evil.
I guess it’s finally time I talk about Venom Harry for real. There remains something tantalizing about placing a terminally ill, terrified man-child at Venom’s core. Harry doesn’t want to die. He wants to forever play with his best friend and save the world in a naive, well-intentioned way. In short: he wants his life to be meaningful, not just a blip on the radar. When the Symbiote rejects him and once again turns Peter into everything he should’ve been, there’s soil ripe for jealousy, self-sabotage, and extreme fear from Harry. Part of what makes Harry interesting as a character is that he’s got everything Peter “wants” — money, charm, stability — and yet rarely gets what he thinks he deserves — fame, recognition, MJ. The Symbiote turning on Harry could have been a true blow to a fragile man, a second death sentence to someone who had just grown comfortable believing he would live to see tomorrow. With extreme generosity, Harry’s anger and weakness could read as withdrawal, but he’s just a sick guy. His death is closer than ever and he’s scared.
A lot of this seems to exist on the surface of Insomniac’s collective mind, but it’s, once again, told and not shown, A to G to P to Z. When the Symbiote reconnects with Harry and transforms into Venom, who goes on a shockingly fun rampage that ends with the gruesome murder of Kraven, it feels rushed and unearned. The Symbiote doesn’t hate Peter, it literally just got taken off the guy. Harry doesn’t hate Peter, and any jealousy or fear remains pretty unspoken. Harry becomes a murderer, and then a puppet for the Symbiote as it wants to “save the world” — a perversion of Harry’s founding mission for the Emily May Foundation — seemingly because he has to. We needed Venom; we got him. What next?
I’m grateful that the next set of letters are the last ones, because really I’m not sure how much more thinking about this game I can take. I haven’t outright hated something so deeply and passionately for a long time. It isn’t that Insomniac took a big swing and missed in an interesting way; rather, they bunted and tried to claim a home run. Or, outside of baseball: they put in the minimum possible effort and expected maximum payoff. I can tell you right now that the ending is far from worth it, and that this entire experience may rank above Spider-Man: Miles Morales as my most loathed narrative. Excited for you to experience a nonsensical, sloppy ending, and not in the fun way.
Toastiest,
Micaela