Sony extended "Spider-Man," yet butchered "Carnage"
Variations Issue № 5: On 'No Way Home' and the Venom-verse
I’m willing to bet that even if you are a casual fan of the MCU movies, you are aware that Spider-Man: No Way Home (NWH) was temporarily back in theaters earlier this year in an extended edition known as “The More Fun Stuff version.”
This extended cut reportedly sports an additional 11 minutes of footage [you can read a list of the differences here] and was intended to appeal to two types of viewers: those that haven’t seen the film in theaters when it first came out last year, grossing over a billion dollars domestically, and those that have seen its initial theatrical release but were willing to revisit it to see the new material.
I am neither of those types of viewers. In fact, I am bothered by this release and really don’t think it should’ve happened. This is because, out of all the movies currently composing what I will refer to as the ‘Sony Venom-verse’ (Venom, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Morbius), NWH is the one that doesn’t deserve an extended cut.*
*I will note that I am not sure what the actual official term for the Sony-Marvel movies currently is. It was at one point supposed to be SPUMC (“Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters”) but it seems that this was quickly retired. Going forward, I will use the term “Venom-verse” as Venom (2018) was the launchpad for this new shared universe.
In this article then, I will first make a case for why NWH doesn’t deserve an extended cut before discussing why Venom, Morbius, and Carnage conversely do.
A Complete Experience
NWH is a complete film, meaning it is a movie that is finished in a technical sense.
Watching it, you don’t get the feeling that there is something particularly missing in terms of storytelling or editing (maybe with one or two minor exceptions), or that its narrative beats are rushed. Some may complain that the picture’s cinematography is shoddy, that it is evident that a lot of its components were filmed separately, with actors being green-screened together.
But in terms of editing and storytelling, the seams of the picture’s construction are well-covered, while the narrative is very coherent. Consequently, there is no sense that restoring cut footage could add anything truly substantial to the film.
In addition, by all available accounts so far, it doesn’t appear that the movie had undergone extensive revision in post-production or that its director Jon Watts was unhappy with the final theatrical release. In fact, the most that I’ve read about the picture’s alteration had to do with the release date switchup that occurred due to Covid messing up the production and distribution of films in 2020-2022.
NWH was, after all, a late addition into the MCU’s new ongoing Multi-verse arc and was initially supposed to be released after Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which would have introduced the concept of the Multiverse to audiences.
When the two were switched around, adjustments had to be made to both in order to account for the events of NWH taking place first chronologically. It is difficult to say at the moment, as to when exactly these adjustments occurred, though it seems to have been at the script stage, as indicated by NWH writers Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna in an interview with Variety:
“We were actually working off of things that were happening in ‘Doctor Strange 2,’ and trying to incorporate them into our script,” McKenna says. “When we started writing, [Strange] knows firsthand the dangers of screwing with these things. Then we changed it so he was a person who doesn’t know that much about the multiverse.
Scenes with Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in NWH apparently had to be rewritten, so that Strange would now begin the film largely unaware of the Multiverse and its dangers, for the events of Madness had not yet occurred within the larger inter-film continuity. These changes though seem to have had only a minor impact on NWH as a whole, meaning that the behind-the-scenes history of the movie doesn’t truly offer a legitimate reason to produce and release an alternate cut.*
*Though I would be very interested in seeing a “post-Madness cut” of NWH, to be honest.
Thanks for checking out my newsletter! If you want to learn more about alternate versions and film history, then sign up below!
The Profit Principle
What all this means is that the only actual justification for the new version is the commercial one. Sony, perhaps taking a cue from Disney’s largely filler reissue of Avengers: Endgame, wanted to sell more tickets (and so more discs/digital releases in the future) and, I suspect, is hoping the MFS Version will push No Way Home past another box office milestone.
Now, I should clarify that I have nothing against such a move in general. After all, all reissues and revisions of Hollywood movies at their core are driven by the profit principle, at least from the perspective of distributors.
You don’t get a ‘director’s cut,’ ‘special edition,’ or ‘4K remaster’ of a movie unless the copyright owner believes there is some sort of potential value in it, and I have bought numerous revised, restored, and other editions of classic and contemporary films alike produced for little reason than to sell more copies.
BUT… I do take issue with Sony’s filler recut here, as much if not all the ‘new material’ present in it was initially planned to be released on Blu-Ray as ‘deleted scenes’ before being scrapped at the last minute. Early cover art for the film’s Blu-Ray release advertised it as having “over 90 minutes of bonus footage” which was supposed to include deleted scenes, and even a listing of the deleted scenes became available online that lines up with the list of restored, new, and alternate footage in the “More Fun Stuff” version. In fact, the only scene that seemingly was not going to be featured in the deleted scenes release at the time is the final post-credit scene.*
*Though I am certain Sony did finish the scenes and included them with finalized VFX, music, polishing, etc. in the MFS Version, rather than present them unfinished, as would likely have occurred were they to remain a supplemental feature.
This is a reprehensible move on Sony’s part, as the studio essentially has participated in a case of false advertising with the home video release, enticing some potential buyers with deleted footage that is not there, while simultaneously making them pay extra for deleted footage that they should’ve already gotten. In effect, this devalues both the homevid release and the reissue. But it looks even worse when you consider the fact that Sony has at least three other films in its nascent shared universe that could be qualitatively improved via an alternate cut.
The Short Shrift: Venom and Morbius
NWH is the first installment of the Tom Holland-starring Spider-Man series that can be officially considered part of (or at least a crossover with) Sony’s Venom-verse, installments of which primarily revolve around ancillary characters from the Spider-Man comics.* The character of Venom/Eddie Brock has a cameo appearance in one of the NWH credit scenes, following up on the events depicted in the credit scene of the second chronological Venom-verse movie, Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), which saw him transported inexplicably to the MCU. (This post-credit scene was reportedly shot by the NWH director Jon Watts, interestingly enough.)
*Ironically, none of these movies are truly ‘spinoffs’ of the Sony/Marvel Spider-Man films starring Tom Holland, as none of them have been introduced in those pictures. Perhaps, they would be more accurately called ‘reverse-spinoffs.’
With the exception of NWH, a Disney/Sony collaboration, each Venom-verse picture thus far has had editorial issues, such as instances of rushed or abbreviated storytelling and missing connective tissue between and within scenes that render visible the seams of construction. All this, alongside external information about the production of these pictures, strongly suggests that each would benefit qualitatively from a longer cut that restored missing connective tissue.
The extent, however, to which the aforementioned seams are visible differs from film to film. Venom, in this regard, has easily the best editing and would not require much revision beyond perhaps the extension of a few rushed scenes (such as Eddie’s ‘blink-and-you’ll miss it’ escape from the Life Foundation about 37 minutes in) and the addition of some violence and gore that could push it to an ‘R’ rating.*
*This would be especially fitting, given the tone of Venom. This is a picture that very much goes over-the-top with both its humor and violence but seems unable to reach the level of dark comedy it is aiming for due to the restrictions of the PG-13. For instance, when we see an alien monster literally cut through multiple people by turning his arms into bladed weaponry, there is incredibly never any visible laceration or bleeding. Indeed, there are some signs that Venom may very well have been intended to be an R-rated movie at the outset, such as Collider’s early unofficial announcement of the picture’s development.
Indeed, I would say the film is almost perfectly paced and almost has a sense of unity, meaning it has no extraneous elements and is not missing anything. The trailers for the movie evince only one minor alteration from an earlier iteration of the picture: the pronunciation of the word “symbiote.”
In the trailer, and thus presumably in an early cut of the picture, Dr. Skirth (Jenny Slate) and pronounces it specifically as “sym-BY-ote,” while in the finished film everyone says “Sym-BEE-ote.” One can infer that this change occurred via redubbing in post-production due to the somewhat negative public reception of the ‘symbiote’ pronunciation by audiences and online commentators. See here for more information.
Meanwhile, Morbius feels like a film that’s occasionally missing whole scenes and subplots.* This is especially the case early on, as whatever Morbius is doing in the vampire bat caves seems to occur off-screen, as does his award acceptance speech. Nonetheless, the picture manages to create a largely coherent viewing experience shot-to-shot and scene-to-scene.
*Supporting evidence can be found in the trailers for Morbius, which feature many scenes or extended sequences that do not appear in the theatrical release, including an alternate climactic action sequence set during daytime. Thus, it is possible the film’s entire third act may have been rejiggered in post-production. The film’s post-credit scenes, specifically those revolving around the character of Vulture (Michael Keaton) have also been clearly reshot and revised, a subject I explore more here.
By my estimate, the picture could use an additional 10 minutes or so to help flesh out its existing sequences and add some more meat to the somewhat too-thin plot of the theatrical release. Much as in case of Venom, I am also certain that an R-rated cut of Morbius could easily be created, as the picture also fits into the horror genre, yet skimps on the blood and gore.
Butchered for Theaters: Carnage
In my mind though, Carnage is the Venom-verse movie that most deserves an extended cut. No, let me to correct that. Carnage desperately NEEDS an extended cut.
I say this because the movie that was released in theaters has every sign of having been butchered in post-production. And when I say ‘butchered,’ I mean ‘mutilated,’ cut down to below the barest essentials. It’s a movie that starts out as a jumbled mess of images that reminded me quite a bit of the theatrical cuts of Suicide Squad (2016, dir. David Ayer), and Dark City (1998, dir. Alex Proyas).
A review of the movie I’ve read summarizes my perspective quite well:
“The editing is disjointed and makes the movie feel less like a cohesive story and instead like a bunch of scenes cobbled together to create a mess of a final product. It feels more like a two-plus-hour movie that was cut over and over to be as short as possible.”
Source: Mack Gowan, Central Times, November 3 2021
Now, I’m sure a lot of folks have seen Carnage in theaters and wouldn’t really recognize what I’m talking about. But anybody that understands editing and has a trained eye for spotting cuts in a film would notice that it often has no breathing room between the story beats, and is regularly missing shots that allow for viewers to make connections between different parts of a scene. That is, you might see an action, then the end result of that an action, but the shot in-between necessary to bridge the beginning and end might be missing.
This isn’t to say that this occurs in every single scene, but it does in most of the scenes. The opening 15 minutes in particular are virtually unwatchable, as cuts from shot-to-shot occur so quickly and furiously that it becomes difficult to keep track of what’s happening on screen and why, breaking viewer immersion.
A good video essay on the issue by The Nerd Network was published on YouTube on May 23, 2022. The author analyzes the sequence where Kletus Cassady (Woody Harrelson) transforms into Carnage the first time and escapes from prison. I’d suggest skipping to about 2 minutes in to get to the analysis proper:
And even after things smooth out a little, there's still evidence of missing connective tissue, even when it comes to small, very basic storytelling details.
For example, there is a scene about 59 minutes into the movie, where Anne (Michelle Williams), the ex-girlfriend of main protagonist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), goes to a supermarket looking for the missing Venom symbiote. She talks to Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu), the storeowner, claiming:
“Eddie said that he [Venom] might be here because of the chocolate.”
However, this dialogue feels weirdly incongruous with the preceding scene that set up Anne’s arrival! In that scene, which had Anne visit Eddie while he’s in police custody, Eddie asks for her help in finding Venom. However, he never once tells her to go see Mrs. Chen, even though, as the film had established earlier, he knows exactly where Venom would likely go to find food.
Here is the relevant part of Eddie’s dialogue with Anne from the scene:
E: “All I know is that he can’t go long without eating food, right, so he’s eating chicken, and he eats chocolate, and that’s only if he’s still observing the rules. We need to find him.”
A: “You mean I need to find him.”
E: “Yeah, you need to find him, please, and then I.. I will fix it.”
A: “I’ll try.”
I have no doubt that at one point, the conversation was supposed to be a few lines longer. Perhaps Anne asks Eddie where he thinks Venom might’ve gone to get his food. And Eddie, after thinking about it, realizes he’d most likely go see Mrs. Chen, because he loves her chocolate and frequents her store.
The absence of this information is a small but crucial detail that makes the scenes feel disconnected from one another, rather than allowing the action to flow organically from one to the next. Now, imagine such issues popping up all over the place.
A proper longer cut of Carnage, based on all this, would not need to restore a lot of complete full scenes but rather extend almost all of the existing ones. Just a few more seconds, a few more lines of dialogue all throughout to fill out the details of the picture, slowing down the pace and making it possible to tell a coherent story would greatly benefit the film as a whole. Were such an approach undertaken, the extended cut could end up being an estimated 20-30 minutes longer. And this is without even considering potential R-rated elements, which again feel sorely missing.*
*For anybody interested in seeing just how extending almost every scene in a movie by a few scant seconds can improve its flow and texture, I would suggest seeing and comparing the theatrical and director’s cuts of Dark City, a picture that was also cut down so much that it seems to jump every 1.5 seconds to a different shot.
Conclusion
Of all the Venom-verse movies, Carnage is the film that most deserves an extended cut. This is the movie Sony should’ve revised and reissued. I believe Sony could make some good profit with such a cut. I’m not going to get the “More Fun Stuff Version” when it’s released on video but I’d definitely buy the extended version of Carnage in a heartbeat if it were available, and I think many Venom-verse fans would as well.
Despite my negative attitude towards the extension of NWH, the fact that Sony released the “More Fun Stuff Version” in the first place proves that the company is not above releasing longer cuts of the Venom-verse pictures, meaning a potential revision of Carnage could occur in the future. I truly hope it happens, for I am certain a better version can be constructed from all the footage shot for it.
If you like this article, then please, by all means, share it!
I haven't watched No Way Home yet but I definitely agree about Carnage. He very much wasn't the character he needed to be.