Carnage was simpler because he was full-on evil and had no potential for redemption. Even when he was able to accept that Spider-Man was good, they couldn’t co-exist due to their different natures as vigilantes.

Outside of his personal delusions and anger issues, he still claimed that he wanted to help the innocent and punish the guilty.

Venom was a villain at the time, sure, but he was also on the border of becoming more. Since Carnage’s first appearance in 1992, the idea has always been to make a darker, scarier Venom.

Carnage, Venom’s main villain, gets more fanfare by appearing in the sequel where our hero is fully formed. By letting Venom build himself up on his own, flanked by some rather mundane villains, it gave more meaning to Cletus Kasady showing up in the post-credits. Much like how the Justice League movie decided to take its time by giving us Steppenwolf of all people, the first Venom movie had Carlton Drake (who hasn’t appeared in the comics since the early 90s) and Riot (the most forgettable of all of Venom’s comic children). The MCU Spider-Man has yet to meet an Osborn, guys like Thanos and Darkseid started out as ominous benefactors, and the existence of Heath Ledger Joker was merely a cliffhanger tease in Batman Begins. Doom, it’s a breath of fresh air when, say, Man of Steel only makes an Easter egg reference to Lex Luthor instead of going directly for that confrontation.

When there are four different Fantastic Four movies, and they’re all about emphasizing Dr. Something that impresses me with a superhero movie like Venom is when it doesn’t rush directly into the expected villain.

Venom comixology