“God Has Abandoned Us”

Venom: Movie Commentary

“God has abandoned us…I won’t.”

Marvel’s Venom sets up the standalone, anti-hero origin story of Venom, hosted by Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock, using the story theme of “man plays God.” After entrepreneur and visionary Carlton Drake determines man’s fate a lost cause without intervention, he inadvertently brings a group of alien symbiotes to Earth and conducts human testing with them to see if he can perfect the human condition. In this process, he loses all sense of his humanity. As ex-investigative journalist Eddie Brock is pulled into an attempted exposé on Drake, Brock makes contact with the symbiote Venom, leading to an action-packed adventure to stop Drake and another symbiote, Riot, from bringing more symbiotes to Earth.

Of particular interest to me is Drake’s commentary on the biblical story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in the film. Drake sees a God who doesn’t care about His creation, naming Isaac the true hero of Genesis 22 for his willingness to be sacrificed. His takeaway from the story is that man must take God’s place to help man (since God doesn’t exist or won’t help if He does), but as the story reveals, there are disastrous consequences for this decision. 

The issue is, man can never play God, because man is not God. When man tries to replace God, they deny their design and ironically become less human. In the denial of creatureliness, we deny what we are along with our role as “image-bearers,” those meant to represent God (Gen. 1:28; 3). Instead, we become like the imageless beasts, without moral code or heart. I recommend Romans 1 and Athanasius’ On the Incarnation for further reading along these lines.

While I suspect that this was not a fully intended lesson from the Venom writers, they clearly believe, as I do, that “playing God” results in acts of undeniable evil. Christianity goes a step further and substantiates the why. However, Venom makes great strides in the unfolding of its narrative sequence to rebuke Drake’s understanding of God by his fall into inhumanity, whether intended or not.

While oddly paced with some rushed story beats, Venom showcases another stellar performance by Tom Hardy that honors the classic Marvel character, with animation that does the symbiote justice on screen. Yet, the film also reminds us that “playing God” always hurts other people. It abandons humanity, not helps it, because it points them to the wrong solution. You aren’t God, so when you play God, who is the one really doing the abandoning?