October 5 saw two of the most anticipated films of the fall come out: Venom, a superhero flick based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name starring Tom Hardy and Michelle Williams, and A Star is Born, the fourth version of a classic film, directed by and starring Bradley Cooper alongside Lady Gaga. Apart from releasing on the same day, these films seem like night and day. The first is a superhero film from Sony Pictures about a man who gets infected by an alien parasite, turning him into a villainous monster, while the other is a romantic drama from Warner Bros. Pictures about an aging country rock star who discovers and later falls in love with a young up-and-coming musician.
However, those two movies sharing the same release date resulted in perhaps one of the strangest fandom wars ever to be found on the Internet. Once Venom’s social media embargo dropped on October 1st, immediately after the red carpet premiere, critics began sharing their thoughts. While some had mixed feelings, the majority of these tweets were negative. Nothing wrong with poor reception, as plenty of films, have received mean tweets in the past. However, many started to notice a strange pattern with these tweets, as almost all of them seemed like they were worded identically, often with “Just got out of a #Venom preview… Thankfully it was free. Worst two hours of my life. I will be taking my wife to see Lady GaGa’s new movie #AStarIsBorn with Bradley Cooper is great. Their song Shallow is great,” none of them were from established critics, and all of them promoting A Star is Born, praising the film and urging people to see that film instead.
It wasn’t until long that people on Twitter noticed something was up, and sure enough, according to an anonymous Gaga fan interviewed by Buzzfeed News, it was revealed that many of the negative tweets against Venom were done as a ploy to trash Venom to get more people to see the newest Gaga flick. This included many Twitter accounts of seemingly middle-aged Midwestern mothers that are actually operated by young fans of the pop singer. In turn, many Venom fans also started to retaliate back, with tweets firing back against the Cooper film.
Fan wars are nothing new for either of these fandoms. Marvel fans have often found themselves fighting off against fans of DC Comics, while Gaga fans, better known as Little Monsters, often find themselves fighting and bad mouthing figures like Adele and Ed Sheeran, to the point where Sheeran left Twitter after being relentlessly targeted by the Monsters. But when it comes to these wars, as ridiculous and petty as they may be, at least there are distinct similarities between the two that make these fan wars understandable. But Venom and A Star is Born are both extremely different, and the actual crusade the Little Monsters are going through is pointless.
For starters, A Star is Born had already garnered significant buzz since it premiered at the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals. Even if it wasn’t going to be a massive hit at the box office, it is still expected to earn multiple Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and most importantly Best Actress. Second, both movies have totally different audiences. Those who are interested in Venom were likely planning to go no matter what Twitter reactions were like, and even if these negative reviews swayed them away, the majority of Venom’s potential fanbase, men who want to see a monster tear up and eat people, were likely never going to go see a romantic drama about two lovebird musicians. It’s even more apparent, as when both films opened, Venom skewed 68% male on its opening weekend, while A Star is Born skewed 66% female. Essentially, both sides are wasting their time by fighting over movies they had zero interest in seeing in the first place.
In the end though, both films were still successful, as both overperformed on their opening weekend, as Venom opened to $80M and in turn delivering the highest October opening weekend of all time, while A Star is Born opened to a stellar $42.6M, a massive jump from what many industry and box office trackers believed to be an opening around $25M. Venom’s success will be a launching pad for an all-new cinematic universe featuring Spider-Man characters like Morbius and Kraven the Hunter, while A Star is Born’s success will help bolster its chances at awards ceremonies like the Golden Globes and the Oscars. In a way, this feud may have helped in making both parties happy and satisfactory in the end, which is an oddly fitting conclusion to such a confusing fan war.
