Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock is heading back to the big screen, along with his symbiotic other half, in Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The sequel is set to deliver on the parting promise of 2018's Venom, pitting Eddie/Venom against Woody Harrelson's crazed serial killer, Cletus Kasady -- host of the Carnage symbiote. Sony's first official trailer for the sequel teases the birth of Carnage, Eddie's and Venom's new daily dynamic and even more of the first film's particular brand of twisted, comedic chaos.
Venom was met with mixed reviews upon release, but in broad terms, was a hit with fans and a flop with critics. The film currently has a 29 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes but boasts an 81 percent audience score. While critics generally found the film's anarchic mix of buddy-cop comedy, horror, sci-fi, rom-com and superhero action a tangled web, fans reveled in seeing the chaos that defines Venom brought to life. To commit to too dark and broody a film would be to surrender the clownish element of Venom's personality, which keeps him from becoming a generic and irredeemable sci-fi monster; equally, too comedic a tone would risk muting the character's alien savagery, which has marked him one of the most iconic Spider-Man rogues of all time. Fittingly for a symbiote, doing Venom justice means walking a fine line between two extremes, and the trailer for Let There Be Carnage teases just that.
The trailer opens with a look at Eddie's and Venom's morning routine, with a disheveled Eddie Brock caught amidst the noise and the mess of Venom's cooking. Symbiote tendrils extend from Eddie's body to make breakfast and turn up the radio, as Venom sings along to George and Ira Gershwin's "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" in his less-than-dulcet tones. A handwritten sign on the wall above the bizarre scene lists one rule: "No eating people." The trailer immediately establishes the film is doubling down on its predecessor's twisted take on the buddy comedy, something that carries through into Eddie's/Venom's interactions with local shopkeeper Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu), who is now just as familiar with Venom as she is Eddie. It's the perfect foundation for a Venom movie, putting the relationship between its two symbiotically-bound leading characters front and center. Seeing an alien killing machine like Venom contend with Eddie's mundane everyday life may seem ridiculous, but it makes both Eddie and Venom all the more real and reveals a heart behind the symbiote's violence.
From that point on, the trailer gets decidedly darker. A series of glimpses of Cletus Kasady on death row culminate in a look at his failed execution -- the lethal injection proving deadly for everyone but Kasady as the Carnage symbiote enters his body. The haunting notes of Kasady's thoughts approaching supposed death quickly transition from horror into full-blown comic book action. A range of symbiote powers is put on display before Carnage is revealed in all his monstrous, tendriled glory. What is shown in the trailer suggests the film shies away from neither the subtly spine-chilling moments inside the mind of the serial killer nor the scenes of super-powered destruction at the hands of warring symbiotes. Harrelson's note-perfect depiction of bloodthirsty insanity ramps up the tension until it reaches a crescendo as the literal monster within breaks free. The severity of his twisted psyche only heightens the ludicrous glee of witnessing one of comics' craziest supervillains bursting onto the scene.
Venom is a character of extreme dualities. A lethal protector. A clown and a killer. An alien monster and an average Joe. Bringing him to life on film was always going to demand embracing all these aspects of his character and the chaos that comes with trying to balance them all. The first Venom standalone film was a hit with the character's fanbase because it understood that. It didn't compromise on comedy or violence (as far as its PG-13 rating would allow, at least). The character hails from the edgy, horror-inspired, overstated corner of Marvel's comic canon, where the sheer absurdity of a hulking, Spider-Man-esque, brain-eating, parasitic alien becomes the glue that holds together the character's terrifying brutality and twisted comedy. By indulging in all-out comic book craziness and refusing to compromise on a single note of the character, Venom: Let There Be Carnage could prove an even bigger hit than its predecessor.
Directed by Andy Serkis, Venom: Let There Be Carnage stars Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, Reid Scott, Stephen Graham, Sean Delaney and Larry Olubamiwo. The film arrives in theaters Sept. 24.
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