Could They Make a Rated-R Spiderman Movie?

 

The first trailer for the R-rated Venom movie was recently released, and it looks decent. Not great, but not bad either. They are creating a new origin story that is radically different from the comic books, removing Spiderman from the equation. Regardless of why that decision was made, removing Spidey from the story will diminish the commercial success of the film. The problem is, can you even have Spiderman in an R-rated movie? He might have the youngest average audience age of all the major Marvel characters, and one of the most lucrative franchises for selling merchandise to children.

The success of Deadpool and Logan as R-rated comic book movies has broken the traditional mold that these films need to be open to the underage audience to maximize revenue, both in ticket sales and merchandising. The sequel to Deadpool is coming out soon, and later this year Venom hits the big screen. If these two films continue the success of the genre, there will be more pressure on studios to feed this market. We might not see any Spidey at all, or maybe just a brief cameo. There were reports of Tom Holland being on set for filming, but rumours are that he'll only make a brief appearance as Peter Parker, nothing full costume.

There have been talks of plans for a sequel to Venom. I'm not sure if the script has been finalized for a sequel, or if it will include more Spiderman. They might be waiting to see how the movie is received before they decide to attach their most precious franchise into the mix. With Infinity War hitting the big screen soon, that leaves the greatest comic story not yet told on the big screen as the Carnage series from the Spiderman comics.

"Why am I killing you? I'm killing you because I can!"

Carnage was one of the most evil and gruesome mass murders that Spidey ever faced, and it's almost impossible to do the real story justice while having it kid friendly. That's why after 6 Spiderman movies, we still haven't seen the most commercially successful villain from the comics. The Maximum Carnage series was among the best selling Spiderman comics of all-time. But there is no PG version of the Carnage story that you could possibly tell in non-animated form.

Even if they do decide to include Spiderman more prominently in a Carnage movie, the impact will be diminished by Spidey's absence in Venom, because it needs to establish them as mortal enemies. One of the best aspects of the Carnage story in the comics is how Spiderman is forced to team up with his mortal enemy to defeat a worse enemy. The failure to establish this rivalry can affect future films, if they even decide to put the wall-crawling menace into the R-rated genre at all.

There was a time when all comic book movies catered exclusively to children, and Spiderman probably represents the apex of that era. More and more adults are watching these movies, and there is no question that this demographic would love to see an R-rated Carnage movie featuring Spidey in a prominent role. Please, just do it.