The one thing I can’t stand more than Marvel films produced by Fox or Sony, post-Spider-Man 2 that is, is when they just get things horribly wrong. I write a lot about Marvel’s upcoming Infinity War film over at Floor8, and if there’s anything I love about the constant stream of promotion, it’s seeing that everyone behind the movie, from the directors to the writers and even the cast, have a deep love for, and vast knowledge of, Marvel Comics.
There are things that the new trailer for the upcoming Venom film gets right, such as Venom’s horrid appearance, Eddie Brock’s journalistic spirit, and the inner monologue between Eddie and the symbiote changing pronouns to “we,” but there’s one massive thing that the trailer gets horribly wrong, and I don’t know how much of it I’ll be able to take.
Call it a niche deterrence, but Jenny Slate pronounces “symbiote” wrong in the trailer, and I don’t know how many times I’ll be able to hear it. I cringed both of the times that it happened in the near 3-minute trailer, so what would happen to me if I heard it, 20, 30, maybe over 40 times over the course of an hour and forty minutes, or however long the film will be?
It might seem like no big deal, as different people from different places pronounce things differently, but it has been pretty much cemented in the universe of Spider-Man, that “symbiote” is pronounced “sym-bee-oat” and not “sym-bye-oat.” Nonetheless, the pronunciation of “sym-bye-oat” is what occurs in the film.
For proof, here’s an example from the Ultimate Spider-Man animated television show:
Here’e another example from a different Spider-Man animated series: Spectacular Spider-Man:
So, how many times will we have to hear it pronounced wrong, and will we be able to take it?
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