Anna Daniels
Upon the flick’s release, the production crew made an about turn on what their intentions with the film had been, claiming they were never aiming for the R-rating in the first place. Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach, the executive producers of the film, spoke with ComicBook to clarify that the harder rating was never an option for the film.
“To me, R is not a consideration,” Arad said. “Can you get away with not-R so that other people can see? So that younger people can see? I made an animated show. There was a lot of Venom in there. It was in ’94. There’s no reason to put in violence. To define what Venom is as violence. He’s not. He’s the lethal protector, which is a very different thing. We want to be really true to the comics. Today, [with] CGI and stuff, we can make Venom bite your head. But we don’t have to show the head going side to side like, ‘that actually tastes good.’ It’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that you finally understood, is that a bad guy? Yeah.”
Arad’s serving of word salad seems to be communicating exactly the opposite of what Fleischer was saying about the film at the beginning of production. Somewhere in there, however, he makes a reasonable point: Spider-Man and his ancillary characters are beloved by children and adults alike, and an R-rating for the film would have excluded a large portion of Venom‘s potential fan base from being able to actually watch it.
Written by: Looper
