Of all the Spider-Man characters out there, Venom‘s one of the most violent, but what else would you expect from a guy whose 90s catchphrase was “I want to eat your brain!” Aside from that, he was frequently growling lines like “I’m going to slurp down your brains like big fistfuls of jello.” He even put his money where his (big and toothy) mouth is in Venom: The Hunger #1, in which he actually chowed down on some poor goon’s cerebral cortex.
Of late, his brain-eating tendencies have been put on the back-burner a bit, but from what Tom Hardy says in this EW interview, they’re coming back in a big way in his solo film this Fall. The hint comes when the actor’s discussing the relationship between Eddie Brock and the symbiote tick (and displaying a pretty damn good understanding of the character in my opinion):
“It’s a bit like Ren and Stimpy, you know? They have different sounds. I always saw Venom as sounding like a James Brown lounge lizard, and Eddie Brock is kind of…” — he switches to an aw-shucks American accent — “I don’t know, an everyday kind of guy. But he’s inherited this massive ego, this beast.” The result is a black-and-white hero whose morals are anything but. “There’s that biting-off-heads issue,” Hardy admits, “which is not what you would expect from, say, Captain America taking down a crook.”
Now, I’m not a doctor, so correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that brains are located in heads. And if Venom is chowing down on heads, then by default he’s also consuming the delicious brainy goo within.
This is promising stuff, as it really sounds as if they know what folks want to see in a movie about the anti-hero. It also hints that the film’s going to take full advantage of its R-rating, which should please longtime fans of the character who worried that Sony wanted a neutered PG-13 version.
Thankfully, we’ll get to see a lot more of Venom very soon, with a new trailer expected to be unveiled at next week’s San Diego Comic-Con before the film itself slithers into cinemas on October 5th. As always, watch this space for more.
