Back in 2018, the hopes of a Venom franchise seemed dead upon impact. Receiving a less than warm reception from critics, and now sitting with a measly 29% Critic’s Score on Rotten Tomatoes, the future looked bleak for Eddie Brock and company…
Against the odds, Venom proved to be quite a hit amongst wider audiences, grabbing itself a very respectable 81% Audience Score as well as a tidy $800 million at the worldwide box office. Claiming victory from the jaws of defeat, a sequel was back on the cards.
The newest trailer promises that Venom: Let There Be Carnage will have just as much action as its predecessor – as well as plenty of Tom Hardy’s freakish one man, ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. Hardy (Inception, Mad Max: Fury Road) isn’t the only cast member to be returning either, with Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn, Blue Valentine) and Woody Harrelson (Natural Born Killers, Zombieland) reprising their respective roles as Anne Weying and Cletus Kasady. Harrelson, certainly, will be enjoying a much more expanded role than in his first outing (in fact, he may get more screen time in the trailer than in the first film) playing Venom’s deranged symbiote foil, Carnage.
Those of you hoping for brutal CGI brawls, certainly won’t be a disappointed. The master of mo-cap himself, Andy Serkis (Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, King Kong), is sitting in the director’s chair and will no doubt put his expertise with visual effects characters to good use at the helm. With him, Serkis has brought a plethora of British talent to the franchise, introducing Naomie Harris (Moonlight, Skyfall) as Shriek and Stephen Graham (Snatch, This is England) as Detective Mulligan. The trailer gives little away about what these characters will be up to, but it seems as though our hero will be facing these threats as both Venom and Eddie Brock.
The trailer itself reveals very little about the narrative, but we can be sure that Carnage is going to be wreaking – rather unsurprisingly – carnage which Eddie and Venom must stop. We did, however, get a glorious glimpse of Carnage in all his crooked glory, tendrils and all.
Recent Marvel offerings have given us an exploration of grief in WandaVision and the effects of privilege and racism in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The trailer for Venom: Let There Be Carnage doesn’t seem to be concerned with such a level of social commentary. It looks like Venom 2 is going to give us more of what we enjoyed in the original film. The dark comedic pairing of Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy are enough to get us all back to theaters in droves.
The trailer for Venom: Let There Be Carnage doesn’t seem to be concerned with such a level of social commentary.
Rightly or wrongly, Venom: Let There Be Carnage looks like its going back to basics with superhero films. I'm not holding my breath for anything near depth, but the trailer sets the film up nicely to be a good old-fashioned, high-stakes punch up. Cast off those constricting notions of insightful societal criticism or engaging character development, settle in for a classic no-holds-barred symbiote smackdown – no strings attached.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is set for release in September 2021.
