I'm not a comic book guy by any means (I am sure that someone else here could shed more light on it - Hell, you could probably find it on Wikipedia)...
BUT, since 'Venom' is referred to as a symbiote and NOT a parasite, it seems that it can live on its own - but not very well, and certainly not to the point where it would give Spidey black eye on it's own. Like in the trailer you can almost barely see the 'suit' crawling across the ceiling and dripping onto that 70s show kid.
The symbiote suit isn't Venom. Once it takes over Eddie Brock, they as a team become Venom. The suit can't survive without a host body to attach itself to. After it attaches to Spidey, it remembers some of his powers and gives them to Eddie Brock. That's why Venom has some of Spider-man's abilities. Spider-man never fights Venom while he is using the suit. Venom comes after Spidey gets rid of it.
Wow. I totally just comic-book-nerded myself there. I'm a huge Spider-man fan.
The suit, as it may be, was rejected by Spider-Man, thus taking to the first human it could attach itself to, being Brock, who already hates spidey, then the symbiont latches onto (forget his name, crazy guy) to make the super villain Carnage.
Since so many comic books have been around so long, producers have much story line to follow as any film producer would dream of. Now, how do so many get fucked up with video game movies? ie, Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, Tomb Raider, etc.
Actually, the alien suit that Carnage (whose real name is Cletus Kassidy I think) wears is not the same as Eddie Brocks/Venom's. It's actually an offspring of the Venom suit. Apparently Cletus and Eddie shared the same jail cell during a brief period of incarceration and during that time the Venom suit gave birth (this alien symbiote race reproduces asexually once every hundred years or something like that) and this offspring latched onto Cletus since he was the closest human host available at that time. Of course being born in an alien environment, earth, caused this new suit to develop special powers; a mutation which is why Carnage's suit can do a lot of sick thinks that the Venom suit cant.
And yes the alien symbiote becomes Spidey's suit first and then only later does it become Venom once it merges with Eddie Brock. In the story Eddie Brock is Peter Parker's rival newspaper employee who gets famous for interviewing some supposed serial killer. Only it turns out that the guy he was interviewing was a fraud and Spidey ends up capturing the real killer. Eddie loses his job because of this embarrasment and, humiliated, vows vengeance on Spiderman.
The suit itself was a gift to Spiderman from an alien society he apparently fought for in a battle at some point (a crossover story from a different comic book title not affiliated with the Spiderman series). At first Spidey assumes it just functions as a suit with a lot of practical features: he can make the suit form or dissappear at will, the suit can blend in with its surroundings and has an endless supply of organic webbing thats just as strong as his own. Remember in the comic Peter made his own webbing out of a scientific formula and constructed web shooters that he wore around his wrists; in the movie it just comes out of his body).
Eventually Spidey becomes aware the suit has a consciousness of its own and finds out it wants to merge with him permanently. Spidey doesnt want this as the suit seems to have a corruptive influence and so he tries to destroy the suit by going to a cathedral church and standing under the giant tolling bells ( the most harmful weapons against this alien symbiote are fire and sound). The sonic power of the bells rips the suit apart, Spidey assumes its destroyed and goes home not realizing the suit was still alive and remained hidden in the church to regenerate itself. Eddie Brock finds himself at that very church a little later for some reason and the Symbiote senses Eddie's pain and hatred towards SPiderman so it decides to merge with him (since they seem to have a common purpose) and the two of them become Venom. With one goal in mind: to kill Spiderman. Since Venom is therefore literally two consciousness' merged into one form, the schizophrenic split/personality element is in high gear(Venom always uses "us" and "we" when referring to himself).
Venom is Spidey's most dangerous enemy because hes basically a mirror of him in the worst way. He has all the same powers as Spidey and he doesnt set off Spidey's "SPider sense" that warns him of danger (probably because when the suit left Peter it took some of his genetic information with it and knows how to counter the sixth sense like a radar-detector).
One of Venom's biggest appeals as a character is the fact that although he's a psychopath, he retains a twisted but strong conscience often referring to "protecting innocents" as the highest order of duty. He sees himself as a victim of destroyed innocence and not as a bad person so when he's not hunting down spiderman he does a surprising amount of "hero" work; protecting innocent bystanders from potential offenders and violent criminals, although Venom's methods of dispensing justice on those unlucky criminals is far less merciful, obviously, which of course makes him even more fun.
Hey Mebossy it's been a while. This may possibly be the most over the top dork posting I've ever posted, so, I'll have to post it in the nerdiest way in order to amp up terriblocity.
Everything you said in your posting was correct except how he got the suit. There are a couple different ways I think they changed it for the TV shows. But I believe the comic where Spider-man found the suit was Secret Wars 12 or something (let me check) nope it's Secret Wars 8. He's walking around The Beyonder's HQ (or a building in whereever the Beyonder summoned him) when he sees a do-hickey sorry I don't remember the real name of the machine, if there was one. He messes around with it and eventually the machine basically creates/summons this suit for him.
Here is the series of events I remember:
Spiderman Walking by himself in the weird building
Spiderman see machine
Spiderman messes around with machine
A Black circle appears in the middle of the machine
It envelopes him a-la the blob or the mirror scene in the matrix
Spiderman kicks loads of ass
