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Venom Almost Had A Completely Different Opening Scene

As the first entry in its own planned cinematic universe, it was the Sony-endowed duty of the new Venom movie to establish the origins of the titular alien symbiote while still leaving room for further world-building in sequels and spinoffs. This raises the question of how much of the symbiote’s background should be revealed in Eddie Brock’s first standalone film, and according to director Ruben Fleischer, the team were initially considering going all the way back to the entity’s home planet of Klyntar.

As the first entry in its own planned cinematic universe, it was the Sony-endowed duty of the new Venom movie to establish the origins of the titular alien symbiote while still leaving room for further world-building in sequels and spinoffs. This raises the question of how much of the symbiote’s background should be revealed in Eddie Brock’s first standalone film, and according to director Ruben Fleischer, the team were initially considering going all the way back to the entity’s home planet of Klyntar.

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As it stands, the movie opens with a Life Foundation space probe carrying some symbiote samples back to Earth. But when Fleischer spoke to CinemaBlend, he revealed that the team also considered starting the film off at the initial source of these samples.

“The beginning of the movie was a hard one. Like, how much do we want to tell the backstory? There was a version [of the opening] where there was a planet crawling with tons of symbiotes that were collected and taken back to Earth by the Life Foundation. They had encountered them. But it kind of felt like, my instinct was it would be better to keep it more mysterious and just know that they’ve retrieved something from space. We don’t know exactly by what means or how. Jenny [Slate]’s character later says they encountered it on a comet that was passing, and they retrieved these samples and brought it back to Earth. But yeah, I thought it was better just leave it a little bit mysterious, the backstory of the aliens.”

Likewise, producer Matt Tolmach seemed in agreement that it was better that the symbiote’s home planet be left to the imagination, at least for the time being.

“We toyed with some art work that we loved. … We toyed with it. But we wanted the movie — it’s out there. It’s part of our mythology. It’s part of our backstory, Klyntar and where this all came from and who knows what’s next. But, it made sense to, in this movie, to let the origin of those things kind of unravel in the storytelling is as opposed to going [to that planet].”

Going by Venom‘s current success at the box office, it looks like Sony may well push on with a sequel, despite the critical panning received by this first film. If so, then it’s quite possible that the next outing will explore the symbiote’s Klyntar roots a little more, especially seeing how Eddie’s next antagonist is already being teased as a villain of similar origins.

In any case, Venom is out now in cinemas, so you can decide for yourself whether Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters warrants further exploration.