The first trailer for Venom gave us, well, very little actual Venom. The second had a much better look at Sony’s take on the creepy Marvel anti-hero.
Sony came to Comic-Con today to give us a tiny glimpse at what’s in store to attendees, and a frightful new villain for Eddie Brock and his symbiote friend to tussle with.
Although it isn’t being shared online yet, Sony took to Hall H in San Diego with Venom director Ruben Fleischer and stars Tom Hardy and Riz Ahmed to debut some bombastic and wildly violent footage from the movie (which Hardy went on to say he was making for his Venom-mad son to watch, which is weird given all the, well, copious violence.)
The footage shown started with Hardy’s Eddie Brock going into a store. The clerk, who he knows, says he looks terrible and he should meditate. So he does.
The tape, voiced by Peter Cullen (of Optimus Prime fame), tells Eddie to relax. But he can’t. The film keeps cutting to his terrible fits of rage and violence.
And just as he’s about to get relaxed, a voice in his head says, “EDDIE.”
Carlton Drake (Ahmed) talks about how the world is changing, and people are disposable. But the bond between human and symbiote is a new species, a higher life form.
We see a symbiote completely take over someone in the lab, then Eddie in a similar space phasing in and out of something.
There was new footage of the motorcycle chase from the last trailer, but at one point, Eddie drives between two cars and the symbiote grabs them both from the middle. He smashes through the woods.
“The life you had is over,” says the voice. Eddie agrees as long as they don’t hurt people. Then Venom comes out of his body like the water creature in The Abyss, a giant, gross snake.
Then, finally, we see his full transformation into Venom, and he is MASSIVE. He’s easily twice the size of a human being.
Venom has a bunch of action scenes and Eddie admits, the power isn’t all bad. Venom turns his hands into giant axes and smashes a bunch of people, then there’s a woman who shoots kind of knives out of her back.
Then we see a second symbiote — and the two of them jump in the air, it goes to slow-motion, and the symbitoes open to half reveal Eddie and Carlton as the two symbiote hosts.
Then, finally, we’re back to that store from the beginning. The huge, hulking Venom tells a guy in it that he’s going to eat every single part of his body if he doesn’t leave. There’s a POV of the guy being bitten by Venom. The store clerk stands there shocked.
And then we’re back to regular Eddie. He says, “I have a parasite.”
The other symbiote in the footage was confirmed as a familiar face: Riot, a member of the sinister Life Foundation, will be a major villain in the movie, bonded to Riz Ahmed’s character, Carlton Drake.
“He has a unique trait,” Fleischer told the audience. “You don’t know where Riot is going to turn up.”
But Riot may not be the only villain in Venom, according to the director, who went on to tease the possibility of other foes for Eddie to face. Carnage, anyone?
And finally, when asked about Spider-Man, Fleisher said he believes pitting Tom Holland’s Spider-Man versus Tom Hardy’s Venom is something Sony would definitely like to do in the future. But whether Tom Holland will make an appearance in Venom is anyone’s guess, although goodness knows how Venom could work in the MCU.
Venom is set to hit theatres on October 4.