Like its slimy alien anti-hero, the story of Venom is super absorbing. Whether you remember the fan fave bad guy from the comics or enjoyed meeting the character in the first 2018 film, you’re probably raring to check out Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
So, we’ve prepared a handy Q&A to satisfy everything you need to know about this upcoming super-sequel—from the background of its characters, to the elements fans should be excited for. Like for example, it’s directed by Gollum himself: Andy Serkis?! Let’s get into it!
What happened in the first movie again?
Directed by Zombieland‘s Ruben Fleischer, Venom introduced us to Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), a dogged investigative journalist who got both himself and his fiancée (Michelle Williams) fired from their jobs after they dig into a sinister bio-engineering project a bit too much. Mostly forgettable villain Carlton Drake (a pre-Oscar nom Riz Ahmed) was using human guinea pigs to experiment with an alien symbiote. Conveniently enough, the only human whose body is somehow capable of hosting the dangerous entity was Eddie.
Calling itself Venom, the entity basically screwed with Eddie’s life, forcing him to (amongst other things) dunk his head in a restaurant lobster tank in search of protein, and to test out awesome new powers of strength, invulnerability and gloopiness.
There was a big ol final battle between Venom/Eddie and Drake, now infected by the body-hopping Riot, ending with a victorious Eddie deciding to share his consciousness with Venom as a force for good. Despite breaking up with his fiancée, things were left on an optimistic final note…until a mid-credits scene saw Eddie visiting a creepy red-haired serial killer in jail…
Who’s in the cast of Venom: Let There Be Carnage?
Hardy returns as the two-faced protagonist—voicing Venom‘s guttural little asides too—and Michelle Williams will be back in some capacity as Eddie’s sensible ex, despite moving on to a new romance.
We should mostly be getting excited about Woody Harrelson as imprisoned killer Cletus Kasady: fixated on Eddie and his superhuman secret, Kasady is obsessed with becoming his own kind of sticky catastrophe.
“What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is mine”, he whispers through prison bars, before attacking Eddie and perhaps nicking some of that super-goo. You can also get a few glimpses of Naomie Harris as one of Kasady’s main allies Shriek, a criminally insane villainess with the ability to manipulate sound.
So…who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy?
A kinda complex question. You probably remember Spider-Man 3, when Topher Grace played a more pathetic, less muscle-bound version of Eddie Brock who terrorised poor Tobey McGuire as a strictly villainous version of Venom. But in this new Sony take on the character, Venom is more like a naughty lil demon on Eddie’s shoulder, a dark side he’s trying to keep in check as per the comedic scenes in the trailer above.
The arrival of Carnage makes meek photojournalist Eddie and his gooey, people-eating friend even more righteous by comparison. While symbiotes are not innately evil, the red intergalactic entity Carnage happens to bond with the sinister mind of serial killer Kasady, turning him into the ultimate outright bad guy for anti-hero Venom to battle.
Will Spider-Man show up?
I like your thinking, but the answer is probably no. Venom is typically an A-list villain for Spidey, and Andrew Garfield’s so-so Spider-Man films were indeed released by the same studio, Sony, meaning that we were anticipating that epic crossover for a while.
But now that the MCU’s got their mitts firmly on the character (and his past incarnations seemingly, with both Garfield and McGuire apparently included in the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home), chances are slim. It’s fun to read comic-book nerds getting their hopes up about it on Reddit though.
What is Venom: Let There Be Carnage rated?
Despite being pretty scary and toothsome on the surface, Venom copped a mild PG-13 rating for the first movie, and the sequel is going for the same broad audience appeal, meaning it’s a safe option for younger comic book fans. There’s a lot of jokes about Venom eating people, and Carnage does stick one hefty tentacle down a poor cop’s throat in the final trailer above. But you’ll never see anything too graphically gory or inappropriate.
How do I watch Venom: Let There Be Carnage?
On November 25, Venom: Let There Be Carnage gets a broad release in cinemas around Australia…provided we’re not still in some stage of lockdown, or of movie studios tentatively shifting their release dates around in order to get the best box office results.
If, like us, you’re excited for another dose of Tom Hardy’s best physical comedy, November 25 is the date to cross your fingers for.
