Life, a sci-fi horror movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds is currently getting rave reviews from critics, and rightly so. The movie, which is out this weekend, is way more than just the Alien wannabe people were expecting, it’s a truly welcome and entertaining addition to the drastically under-served genre of sci-fi horror. But, that’s not where the intrigue surrounding Life ends….
When a recent trailer for Sony’s Life was released, some eagle-eyed viewers noticed that it re-used footage from a previous Sony movie. That movie? Spider-Man 3. That in itself isn’t that strange. After all, studios have often recycled b-roll footage for use in other movies. But, the plot thickened when Sony made the shocking announcement that they were moving ahead with plans to give the classic Spider-Man villain, Venom, its own movie. Needless to say, comicbook and sci-fi geeks have been going a little bit crazy about what this could mean.
The Plot Thickens
In Life, a team of International Space Station astronauts investigates what they initially believe to be a sample of a simple life form discovered on Mars. As you will have gathered from the trailer, that life form turns out to be far from simple. Images of the alien being wrapping itself around anything in its path understandably conjured up similar images from another Sony movie, Spider-Man 3.
Spider-Man 3 sees an extraterrestrial symbiote falls to Earth and bonds with Peter Parker, turning him into a bit of a Spider-douche. Parker eventually rejects the symbiote, but it finds a new host in the form of Eddie Brock, and thus Venom arrives.
The theory goes that Life is actually an extravagant prequel for the alien symbiote that turns Brock into Venom, and though it might sound crazy, it sure is a lot of fun. It’s a theory that Life screenwriters, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have enjoyed playing up to. After Spider-Man 3 Reese and Wernick were asked to write a treatment for a Venom spin-off movie, but the project was eventually scrapped and it’s thought that this newly-announced movie is completely different.
Sony executives are reportedly firmly denying that the rumors are true, but this crazy theory remains just one of many reasons you should go and check out Life at the theaters this weekend.
