MCU Spider-Man vs Venom: why the PS5 symbiote wins

Spider-Man versus Venom is one of the best rivalries in comics, so I wanted to settle a specific version of it: the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Spider-Man against the Venom from Insomniac's PS5 game. My verdict is that Venom wins, and I don't think the fight is that close.

That Venom comes from Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (2023), developed by Insomniac Games. Below I go through strength, durability, speed and agility, and the extra powers each side brings. Peter Parker has real advantages, including the Iron Spider armor and his experience. In the end I don't think either one is enough.

Strength: MCU Spider-Man is powerful, but Venom overpowered two Spider-Men at once

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. He also caught the eye of billionaire Tony Stark, who gave him the chance to become one of Earth's Mightiest Heroes as a member of the Avengers. That's a lot for someone still in high school, but Peter is up to the task. He understands that with great power comes great responsibility.

The bite gave him the proportional strength, speed and durability of a spider. He's one of the most physically powerful heroes in the whole MCU, especially when he goes all out. He outclasses your typical super soldier. He has dealt with Iron Man and Hulk level threats, and he even staggered Giant-Man and Thanos. When he lets loose, he would put an absolute beat down on the villains he faces.

Venom is definitely strong too, no question, and he got stronger throughout the game as he became more unhinged. Early on, Harry as Agent Venom easily beat Kraven in a fight. Peter in the Venom suit stopped an even more powerful Lizard. Finally, Harry as the true Venom killed Kraven outright, a villain who had already killed a ton of super villains himself.

In his fight against the two Spider-Men, Venom was always able to overpower them, showing he was stronger than both combined. Those two are plenty powerful on their own. Peter held up a construction crane that appears to be up to 100 stories tall before a helicopter knocked him off the building. Miles pulled two sections of a bridge together. Spider-Man even swings around and kicks water tanks that, completely filled, weigh up to 100 tons, and Peter casually throws them around. Venom still overpowered both of them and made it look easy. Fighting all those MCU villains is impressive, but the Spider-Man in the games can do that too, and Venom trounces him. Venom takes the edge here.

Durability: Insomniac's Venom shrugs off fire and sonic attacks, while Spider-Man keeps getting back up

It's going to be very hard to injure this version of Venom. He easily scales above nearly every other hero or villain in the Insomniac universe and can take attacks from all of them with no problem. From the looks of his fight with the two Spider-Men, Venom could have kept going forever without going down. They weren't doing anything against him.

This Venom is also essentially immune to some of his past weaknesses. He can walk through fire, something that would have destroyed the symbiote in the comics. He's far more durable against high frequencies and sonic attacks, though they can still hurt him. The only guaranteed way to put him down is anti-venom, a weakness the game had to create in order to beat him, because this Venom was so tough.

Spider-Man is also surprisingly tough. He has taken grenades to the face, grenades that normally vaporize the average person and leave only a skeleton. He takes an all-out beat down from the Sinister Five, and I have to ask whether it was that hard to include one more villain. Peter has been run over by a train, shot with missiles, and blasted backwards by all sorts of punches and attacks over the years, some of them very powerful, coming from the likes of Giant-Man or even Thanos himself.

You can't count Spider-Man out. The MCU version knows how to take a punch, and like any good Spider-Man, he knows how to keep getting back up after it. He's incredibly hard to put down. Still, durability goes to Venom, because it's Venom. Venom has always held the physical edge over Spider-Man, and that remains true here.

Speed, spider sense and the Iron Spider armor are where Spider-Man shines

Where Spider-Man has to shine 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 in a fight like it's nothing, reacting to bullets, missiles, lightning or anything else you send his way. He's very nearly impossible to tag in a fight.

That's especially true once you factor in his spider sense. It's now so finely tuned and advanced that he can pick up on Green Goblin's personality shifts, so he can dodge most attacks before they're even thrown his way. Spider-Man also wouldn't be Spider-Man without his trusty web shooters, which fire a wide assortment of webs. He can use them to instantly web people up or to move across the city with ease.

Then there's the Iron Spider armor created by Iron Man. It amps up Peter's strength and durability to the point where he no longer needs to worry about dodging bullets, because he's completely bulletproof. It's made of millions of little nanites that he can assemble and disassemble at will, and it lets him grow four extra arms out of his back, which makes him a Spider-Man in the most literal sense.

Venom's regeneration, shapeshifting and host takeover give him powers Spider-Man lacks

Venom has many other powers that Spider-Man doesn't. For starters, he has incredible regenerative abilities and can quickly heal from almost any injury. He can shapeshift, creating all sorts of weapons, tentacles and tendrils during a fight, and he can even form wings to fly around.

He can quickly produce new symbiotes to help him in a fight or convert others to his side. Using that power to spread out and infect everything and everyone around him, Venom spread across most of New York City and nearly took it over in just a few days.

Finally, one of the things that makes Venom unique, and so dangerous, is that he can latch onto a new host whenever he wants and take over. That means Spider-Man might very well end up transforming into Venom himself.

Verdict: Venom beats MCU Spider-Man, even with the Iron Spider armor

Even with how physically powerful Spider-Man is, Venom still outclasses him, and it's not even relatively close. In a long, drawn-out fight, Venom is going to hold that advantage. Insomniac's Spider-Man is very near comic book Spider-Man levels. There have been crossovers between that universe and Earth-616, and Insomniac's Spider-Man held his own against the main comics Spider-Man. Venom was trouncing him. So saying Venom holds the physical edge over MCU Spider-Man is a bit of an undersell.

I also don't want to discount Spider-Man altogether. He has much more experience. Venom is seriously powerful, but Spider-Man has faced aliens, powerful super villains and whole gangs of them, fought in wars and against armies, mindless robot killer drones and maniacal alien warlords with a lust for genocide. He has been around the block once or twice, and you can't discount the advantage that experience gives him.

Second, I think the Stark tech is a big advantage, and something Insomniac's Spider-Man didn't have in his fight. But while it makes Spider-Man tougher and more powerful, it isn't packing enough focused firepower to put Venom down. This Venom is close to immune to his natural weaknesses. He walks through fire and shrugs off sonic attacks, and even with the Iron Spider armor, we haven't seen Spider-Man use anything that's guaranteed to put Venom down.

It probably does mean Spider-Man could cook up something that would eventually beat Venom, but that's not the question. The question is who would win a straight-up random fight. Even with the Iron Spider armor, I don't think Spider-Man is powerful enough to beat Venom. In fact, "I don't even think it's really that close." Venom wins.