If the cliché movie demons tend to manifest themselves as depression and substance abuse (among many other horrible tragedies), Venom flips the tables by summoning a real inky-black monster from within the unsuspecting Eddie Brock.
The latter is a down-on-his-luck reporter hoping to catch a break by investigating the Life Foundation and its seedy human experiments, while Venom is… the sinister symbiote, a being so big and ugly it’s capable of ripping off a man’s head using only its teeth.
Imagine the classic Jekyll and Hyde combo, albeit with a Marvel Comics twist, and you’ll arrive at something pretty similar to Venom, Sony and Ruben Fleischer’s franchise-starter that was recently elected Total Film cover star. And we have a new action shot to prove it.
But first, here’s what Fleischer had to say about the unique, dual nature of Tom Hardy’s performance, and why it’s “really impressive and fun to watch.”
Tom brings so much complexity, and I would say danger, to the roles and characters he plays. Those are two inherent qualities of Eddie Brock and Venom, the complexity and the menace. So getting to watch Tom live between these two characters who are sharing a body and having to navigate these two forces simultaneously was really impressive and fun to watch.
From the looks of things, Eddie Brock is defending his apartment from a team of armed goons, who have presumably been sent from the Life Foundation in order to contain the symbiote threat before things get out of hand. Yeah, good luck with that…
Echoing his director’s comments, Tom Hardy then went on to admit that Venom‘s character set-up was part of the reason he was attracted to the Sony-backed project in the first place.
For me, it was the multiple personalities, because to play that, on a kind of epic level, a superhero level, that was the big draw. I was like, ‘This is a great character, because he’s a diverse antihero. He’s not a good guy, and he’s not a bad guy.’ He’s connected to this alien who’s not from this planet. They’ve got to figure out an ethical framework between the two of them, and neither of them are run-of-the-mill types. There’s this kind of Odd Couple [relationship] between the two of them. I enjoyed the Jekyll and Hyde nature of that, in a superhero world.
Set for release on October 5th, Venom has the weight of a fledgling superhero universe resting on its giant, inky-black shoulders. But will it be able to deliver the goods? We’ll find out in six weeks’ time.
