7 Years Ago, Sony Made an Even Better ‘Venom’ Movie That Had Nothing to Do With Marvel

There’s a good chance many fans have already forgotten about the science-fiction horror movie Life, which, considering the film’s stacked cast featuring Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Rebecca Ferguson, is rather incredible. Boasting the tagline “We were better off alone,” Life centers around the crew of the International Space Station’s discovery of a small, multi-celled alien organism and the horrific, deadly consequences of such an unearthing. Even stranger than the scientists’ discovery, however, were the marketing tactics Sony used to publicize the film.

When it was released in March 2017, hundreds, if not thousands, of comic book fans were certain that Life was more than it appeared to be. Thanks in large part to the backbone of the film’s story and some curiously placed visuals in the film’s marketing campaign, the internet was practically convinced that Life was going to serve as a prequel to 2018’s eventual Sony/Marvel collaboration, Venom. But do Life and Venom truly have a symbiotic relationship with one another? Here’s all the evidence suggesting that they just might.

The Breadcrumbs Were All There

When Sony first announced the sci-fi horror film Life in 2015, its premise of a six-person crew discovering alien life on Mars, which begins to evolve and then pick them off one by one rapidly, didn’t immediately raise suspicions. If anything, it simply sounded like the typical type of horror-sci-fi fare that Hollywood has been churning out for decades. Then, ten days before the film hit theaters, the movie’s “red-band” trailer dropped online, and everything changed.

Suddenly, the internet was convinced that Life was a stealth Marvel movie hiding in plain sight. That’s because this restricted trailer contained footage from Spider-Man 3, Sam Raimi’s original trilogy capper, and the film that introduced movie-going audiences everywhere to the character of Venom (played at that time by Topher Grace). In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment from the red-band Life trailer, an establishing shot of New York City shows a group of civilians looking upwards towards the sky. The unusual thing is that this clip was directly ripped from Spider-Man 3, albeit at a slightly different angle than was used in the final cut of that feature film.

Movie studios recycle stock footage all the time, but by combining a series of other coincidences, a different picture begins to form. For instance, we’ve already discussed the film’s plot, but it really can’t be too strongly stated that the discovery of an evolving alien-life form on a different planet, one that, in its initial form, resembles a goo-like substance, is strongly reminiscent of how the Venom symbiote was first discovered in the Marvel universe.

Canonically speaking, Spider-Man discovers the Venom symbiote during the events of the original Secret Wars while visiting the alien planet known as Battleworld. There, this organism attaches itself to him after his classic red-and-blue costume is destroyed during combat. While the alien Symbiote helps Spidey out a lot at first, once he’s back on Earth, he slowly realizes that this alien parasite is corrupting him and making him far more violent than he has any desire to be. Eventually, Spidey ditches the Symbiote, which, in turn, finds a new host in Eddie Brock.

After appearing on-screen for the first time in Spider-Man 3, Eddie Brock would return with his very own feature film starring Tom Hardy in the title role. In fact, Venom had been gestating in pre-production at Sony for so very long that the screenwriters responsible for Life, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, were formerly hired to pen a screenplay for a Venom spin-off based on the version of the character that Raimi had created. That little tidbit of information was yet another big breadcrumb internet sleuths pointed to when suggesting that Life might very well be a Venom prequel hiding in disguise.

Then, there is the case of the title itself. For nearly as long as Venom has been around, he’s been hunted by a corporation that has been trying to weaponize his Symbiote by creating more of them. That company’s name in Marvel Comics is The Life Foundation. Quite frankly, it seemed like too obvious a connection to be a coincidence that this movie purporting to tell the story of an alien lifeform’s discovery was also called Life​​​​​. Surely the men responsible for previously developing a script on the character would know that, right?

The year before Life’s release in 2017, Sony and Marvel announced their intentions to bring Venom back to the movies with Tom Hardy in the title role. With the studios abandoning the character’s initial concept from the earlier trilogy, the internet became convinced more than ever that Life would serve as a prequel to the upcoming Venom reboot and document how the alien Symbiote found its way to Earth. The one thing they didn’t necessarily account for is that Life would be more in keeping with the original spirit of Venom than what came next.

What Makes Life a Better Movie Than Venom?

It’s the Horror Movie Venom Should Have Always Been

Looking back at it now, Life is a surprisingly entertaining movie to revisit. Boasting fun performances from its trio of big-name actors Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, and Ryan Reynolds, if the film ripped off the story to any horror-sci-fi IP, it was probably Ridley Scott’s Alien. Whereas Ridley Scott’s unforgettable film transpires in a world and era very much unlike our own, Life feels like it exists in something closer to the present day.

Similar to the Xenomorphs at the heart of the Alien franchise, this extra-terrestrial, nicknamed Calvin, is a nearly indestructible parasite that grows and evolves the more it consumes. Whereas the Xenomorphs eventually stop growing at a certain point, Calvin’s potential for growth appears to be exponential, which is, of course, one of the big reasons our collection of scientists bands together to prevent the creature from making it back to Earth. If they don’t stop Calvin from escaping from the International Space Station, then it’s entirely likely that it will turn our planet into something as desolate and dead as Mars.

Following its earliest appearances, Calvin eventually outgrows its visual similarities to the Venom symbiote. More importantly, while the Venom symbiote can certainly be misused if it falls into the wrong hands, Calvin’s relationship with humanity is far less complicated. Once it realizes that humanity is willing to harm it to unlock its secrets, the creature’s only desire is to destroy and consume us all. In that sense, Life becomes the horror story version of Venom that, arguably, is more exciting and in keeping with the character’s original concept than what 2018’s Venom wound up becoming.

A strange (although not ineffective) mishmash of comedy, action, and horror, Venom certainly left its mark on audiences (there’s a reason it’s about to release its third and final entry), but it left many fans of the Symbiote’s origins in the pages of Marvel Comics feeling unfulfilled. Sure, Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock struggles with controlling the alien symbiotes’ more bloodthirsty proclivities throughout the film, but for the most part, those moments are played for laughs rather than scares.

If there’s one thing the character of Venom has always been at his best, it’s eating brains and frightening the bejesus out of everyone. Life more or less gives Marvel fans their cake and lets them eat it too by providing an “unofficial” version of the Symbiote’s discovery and documenting it in the manner many fans were hoping for by playing into the narrative’s potential for horror.

How Does The Theory That Life is a Venom Prequel Hold Up by the Film’s End?

Surprisingly, the Theory Doesn’t Burn Up Upon Entering Earth’s Atmosphere

For all the comparisons people wanted to make between Life and Venom, it’s important to clarify that the two properties are NOT related. By the end of Life, Calvin has evolved into a creature that resembles nothing like its potential Symbitoic cousin. And yet, the ending of Life doesn’t outright squash those similarities once and for all.

At the conclusion of Life, the hostile alien has successfully made it back to Earth, playing out in a nifty sleight of hand sequence in which director Daniel Espinosa makes the audience think that our heroes have successfully deflected Calvin from reaching Earth, only to realize that they have failed. While escaping the collapsing International Space Station, two escape pods manage to make it out. The one we’re led to believe is returning to Earth holds Miranda North (Ferguson) to warn humanity about what was discovered on Mars. The other harbors David Jordan (Gyllenhaal) and Calvin, who have been sent on a one-way express ticket to deep space.

When the escape pod finally crashes on Earth and fishermen arrive to let Miranda out, they discover, much to everyone’s surprise, that it is the pod containing David and Calvin instead. As David screams for the team not to open the hatch, Calvin bonds with his human form in a manner that resembles the Venom symbiote more than ever before.

This rumor eventually took on such a life of its own that, inevitably, the filmmakers behind the story were asked about it. When Yahoo Movies touched base with Reese and Wernick during Life’s press junket in Austin, Texas, they were impressed by the ingenuity of internet sleuths, stating:

A couple of Life’s filmmakers did go on to work in the Marvel Universe in a more official capacity. Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick wrote the screenplays for the Deadpool films, including the most recent Deadpool & Wolverine, while director Daniel Espinosa found slightly more dubious success directing the 104-minute-long meme Morbius. So, while Life might not have ever officially been a Marvel movie or a stealth Venom prequel, it played an ancillary role in the franchise nonetheless.