Venom: Let There Be Carnage gets a gooey first… | Little White Lies

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Ven­om: Let There Be Car­nage gets a gooey first trailer

10 May 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

Frightening creature with gaping, sharp-toothed mouth against dark background.
Frightening creature with gaping, sharp-toothed mouth against dark background.
Tom Hardy is back as everyone’s favourite qua­si-schiz­o­phrenic vig­i­lante crimefighter.

While the film has its pro­po­nents, 2018’s Ven­om left some­thing to be desired; the bud­dy-com­e­dy schtick between news jour­nal­ist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and the alien sym­biote squat­ting in his body only kicked in deep into the sec­ond act, as if direc­tor Ruben Fleis­ch­er fig­ured out a win­ning bit just a few beats too late.

Today brings a trail­er for the clunki­ly-titled sequel Ven­om: Let There Be Car­nage, and it seems that new-to-the-fran­chise film­mak­er Andy Serkis plans on lean­ing into the comedic dimen­sion more ful­ly. We rejoin Eddie and Ven­om dur­ing a morning’s break­fast, as the antic ten­ta­cles sing the Gersh­win clas­sic Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’, implic­it­ly sug­gest­ing the pair as the cinema’s new Fred Astaire and Gin­ger Rogers.

Two individuals working intently at a desk in a dimly lit room, one person using a computer and the other studying documents.

Their care­ful bud­dy dynam­ic, main­tained by allow­ing the blood­thirsty extrater­res­tri­al to feed on crim­i­nals deemed wor­thy of dis­pos­al, is threat­ened by the arrival of a rival in psy­chopath Cle­tus Kasady (Woody Har­rel­son, sport­ing a mop of curls). He some­how also gains a sym­bi­ot­ic hang­er-on and becomes the force of destruc­tion known as Car­nage, who’s basi­cal­ly just Ven­om, except more vio­lent, and also the col­or red.

The two will go toe-to-toe, as they did in one of Spider-Man’s more pop­u­lar 90s com­ic runs, though the web-slinger won’t be on the scene to join forces with Ven­om so Car­nage may be neu­tral­ized. It’s just motion-cap­ture CGI freak­show ver­sus motion-cap­ture CGI freak­show (it’s start­ing to become clear why mo-cap mas­ter Andy Serkis was brought in this time around).

In any case, it’s a relief to see a super­hero vehi­cle with a sin­cere com­mit­ment to phys­i­cal com­e­dy, as opposed to the occa­sion­al tossed-off one-lin­er. If we’re lucky, maybe Eddie and the friend liv­ing in his con­scious­ness will treat us to a song-and-dance soft­shoe number.

Ven­om: Let There Be Car­nage comes to cin­e­mas in the UK on 15 Sep­tem­ber, and then the US on 24 September.

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