MCU Spider-Man vs Venom: why Sony's Venom wins the fight

Spider-Man versus Venom is one of the best rivalries in all of comics. When it comes to these two particular versions, Tom Holland's Spider-Man from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Tom Hardy's Venom from Sony's films, I don't even think the fight is that close. Venom wins.

Here's how I get there, going through strength, durability, speed, their tools, and finally the factors that decide the matchup.

MCU Spider-Man and Venom are relative equals in strength

Peter Parker was an ordinary kid until a spider's bite gave him amazing powers. Since then he has dedicated his life to fighting crime and protecting the innocent as Spider-Man. He eventually caught the eye of billionaire Tony Stark, who gave Peter the chance to become one of Earth's Mightiest Heroes as a member of the Avengers. That might sound like a lot for someone still in high school, but Parker is up to the task. He understands that with great power comes great responsibility.

The bite gave Peter the proportional strength, speed and durability of a spider, and he's one of the most physically powerful heroes in the whole MCU, especially when he goes all out. Spider-Man way outclasses your typical super soldier. He has dealt with Iron Man level and even Hulk level threats like Cull Obsidian, and he has staggered Giant Man and Thanos.

Venom, meanwhile, crushes cars by running or jumping on them with what looks like no effort at all. He easily took down a whole group of SWAT officers, who were nothing compared to him. That definitely isn't his max, though. What it really comes down to is his fights with Riot and Carnage. Both of them are clearly stronger than Venom, and I'm not going to argue that. Riot is out there tearing up spaceships, and Carnage leaves carnage everywhere he goes. "I know it, you know it, even Venom knows it."

But Venom still faces up to the challenge, even when he definitely doesn't want to. Each time he put up a good fight and got his hits in. He was evenly matching Riot, and he even held the upper hand at the start against Carnage, before Carnage ate the priest and got a power up. Venom might not be as strong as them, but he's within that same tier, which is enough to put him around the same level as Spider-Man. Unlike in the comics, though, I can't say Venom is stronger than Spider-Man. Based on everything they've shown us, they're relative equals.

Spider-Man can take a beating, but Venom is tougher

Spider-Man is surprisingly tough. He has taken grenades to the face, the kind that would normally vaporize the average person and leave nothing but a skeleton. He took an all out beatdown from the Sinister Five (was it really that hard to include one more villain?). He has been run over by a train, shot with missiles, and blasted backward by all sorts of punches and attacks over the years. Some of those hits came from the likes of Giant Man or even Thanos himself.

Seriously, you can't put this Spider-Man down. This version definitely knows how to take a punch, and like any good version of Spider-Man, he knows how to keep getting back up after it. He's ridiculously hard to put down.

Durability still has to go to Venom, though. No doubt about it, he's the tougher of the two. For starters, he's completely bulletproof, all around, and he couldn't care less about bullets. On top of that, Venom has been battered a couple hundred feet, hit with a nasty heel stomp, then launched back another couple hundred feet, and he took all of it. He also took all sorts of attacks from Carnage, who threw him, hit him and trashed him all around.

That's before you even get to his healing factor. He was stabbed in the heart and all over his body and lived. He healed from a crash. Carnage stabbed him something like 30, 40, 50 times, and Venom kept on fighting. He even survived being burned alive by a massive fireball. And if Eddie is injured outside of the symbiote, Venom can instantly heal him and even bring him back to life. That's a healing factor like Wolverine or Deadpool. Venom is definitely taking the edge on durability and toughness, again, no question.

Spider-Man has the edge in speed, agility and spider sense

Where Spider-Man definitely shines is speed and agility. He's easily the best acrobat and the most agile character in the whole MCU. He can dip and dodge around a fight like it's nothing, reacting to bullets, missiles, lightning or anything else you send his way. He's close to impossible to tag in a fight, especially once you factor in his spider sense.

His Peter Tingle is now so highly tuned and advanced that he can pick up on Green Goblin's personality shifts. That lets him dodge almost all attacks before they're even thrown his way.

Venom is pretty fast himself. He moves faster than bullets on a routine basis and even catches them in his mouth. But I don't think he's necessarily faster than Spider-Man, and I definitely don't think he's more agile. That point has to go to Peter.

Why I don't think Spider-Man's webs can match the Venom symbiote's versatility

Spider-Man wouldn't be Spider-Man without his trusty web shooters. He can fire a wide assortment of different webs to instantly web people up, or simply use them to move across the city with ease.

I don't think Spider-Man's webs can necessarily compare to everything the Venom symbiote can do, though. The symbiote brings plenty of versatility to a fight. He can shoot out tendrils all around him, and because Eddie and Venom are a perfect bond, they can fight as a pair. The tendrils come in handy. Still, Venom definitely prefers to keep things up close and personal: physical fights, and eating people by the end.

Why Venom beats MCU Spider-Man

You don't want to discount Spider-Man's skill and experience in fights. Venom is seriously powerful, but Spider-Man has faced aliens, powerful supervillains and whole gangs of supervillains. He has fought in wars, against armies, against mindless robot killer drones and against maniacal alien warlords with a lust for genocide. Spider-Man has been around the block once or twice, and you can't discount the advantage that kind of experience gives somebody. He definitely has an advantage there.

Venom also has some clear weaknesses: fire and loud noises. The problem for Peter is that I really don't think he can generate a loud enough noise or a big enough explosion to beat Venom with them. In the first Venom movie, Venom survived an absolutely massive explosion even though he was weak to fire. I guess that because Eddie and Venom's bond has grown over the years, Venom keeps getting tougher against his weaknesses. In the first movie, Venom was knocked back by a plane passing overhead. By the third movie, he could transform into Venom while on the side of an airplane. I don't think Spider-Man is creating explosions or noises bigger than that.

That leaves Spider-Man's strength and durability against Venom's, and while their strength might be relatively similar, their durability is not. Spider-Man can definitely take a punch, as we saw in his fight with Green Goblin. But that same fight showed it clearly wears on him and that his durability has limits. Venom is tougher and can take many more attacks, so it's going to be really hard for Spider-Man to put him down with just his fists.

Peter does have the edge in speed and agility, but it's not enough. You'd have to say Venom isn't landing any hits, and that's not realistic. Venom is going to land his hits, they're going to injure Spider-Man, and it's not entirely clear that Peter's punches are enough to put Venom down. In fact, "I don't even think it's really that close. Venom wins."