Andy Serkis
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Hardy reprises his role from 2018’s comic book adaptation (a Marvel Cinematic Universe-adjacent offering from Sony Pictures which unfolds in the same realm as Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies) as Eddie Brock, an ambitious San Francisco investigative reporter.
The movie began as serious Marvel business, supposedly — an extended-universe nod to the comic books, and an establishing cameo in 2007's Spider-Man 3 — though where it landed felt a lot closer to chaotic buddy comedy: a platonic love story between a man and the extraterrestrial insult comic living inside him.
Although a character born on the pages of Spider-Man, Venom is a stand-alone character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The Odd Couple (1968)
Directed by Gene Saks
influenced Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Characters Themes Plot
Andy Serkis’ Venom: Let There Be Carnage gives the people (aka you lunatic Venom supporters) what they want — a slapstick superhero comedy that cites The Odd Couple as inspiration for its buddy antics between Eddie Brock and his Venom symbiote.
I never thought I'd get "The Odd Couple" out of a Marvel movie, but here it is.
The first “Venom,” released in 2018, suffered from the need to set up Hardy’s one-man production of “The Odd Couple.”
Straddling the subversive energies of The Odd Couple and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, it’s the classic straight man juxtaposed with the comic foil routine, perhaps with an arguable dash of queerness to pique the interests in communities scavenging for representation through the ruins of mainstream studio filmmaking.
It’s Beetlejuice meets The Odd Couple as Brock and Venom must learn to live together despite their differences.
Batman Forever (1995)
Directed by Joel Schumacher
influenced Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Visuals
Deliberately shallow in plot and with a setup that recalls the “Batman Forever” (1995) aesthetic, this “Venom” follow-on as directed by Andy Serkis is brassier, more playful and funnier than it has any right to be.
Harrelson and Harris are a little distracting at first, the two bringing in the Surge-fueled energy of Batman Forever extras.
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Directed by Frank Oz
influenced Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Music
While I equate that to Levi Stubbs (the carnivorous Audrey II in the 1986 film version of Little Shop of Horrors ) with a mouthful of gravel, Hardy, in an interview with Screen Rant, offers his inspiration.
Unlike, say, Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin in 1984's excellent body-sharing comedy All of Me , every attempt at a similar situation here -- such as Eddie ducking into a women's bathroom to argue with Venom -- falls completely flat.
Instead of being an exciting comic book movie, director Andy Sirkis and writer Kelly Marcel try turning this into a twisted version of the 1984 Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin comedy All of Me .
At its best, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” feels like a superpowered version of the minor Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin classic “All of Me.”
Then it springs out, looking like an oversize, multi-tentacled version of the creature from “Alien” — 40 years and counting, Ridley Scott’s movie retains its influence — and the symbiote becomes even scarier in action than appearance.
Think of an Alien beast with a smoother head, black complexion and a low growl of a voice that renders all he says all-but-incomprehensible.
Of course, the amorphous creature that offers a slight resemblance to the chest-busting monster in the Alien films (and is quite a bit less acidic), got its start as a troublesome attachment to Spider-Man in the mid-1980s.
Like "Evil Dead II," this is an off-the-wall, over-the-top, "Three Stooges" inspired freak show.
The Verdict: Much like Evil Dead II , Venom 2 takes what works about its shaggy predecessor, turns it up to 11 and gives it almost exclusive focus, and exponentially increases the silliness.
Lady in the Lake (1946)
Directed by Robert Montgomery
influenced Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Characters
Its chief difference — and a brilliant angle — is that Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe isn’t a tough, quick-witted and verbose gumshoe like Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep or Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake but rather a shuffling, mumbling slob played by Elliott Gould.
One wishes Serkis and scribe Kelly Marcel had the agency to really lean into this weirdness, of a man’s body serving as host for a demanding entity, with similar voice work to something more outrageously strange like the 1990 French cult classic Baby Blood .
Daredevil (2003)
Directed by Mark Steven Johnson
influenced Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Visuals
Rather than really make an effort to change things, the production clearly saw the previous movie’s success as validation of its bad choices, so it regularly succumbs to many of the same issues – maintaining the air of bad mid-aughts comic book movies like Mark Steven Johnson's Daredevil , Tim Story’s Fantastic Four , and Jonathan Hensleigh's The Punisher .
Lejos quedan los años zozobrantes del cambio de milenio, cuando títulos como Hulk (2003), Daredevil (2003), Catwoman (2004), Los 4 Fantásticos (2005) o Elektra (2005) aunaban palos de ciego, efectos digitales cuestionables y ningún sentido del ridículo en sus traslaciones de los personajes de las viñetas.
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Directed by Sam Raimi
influenced Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Characters Visuals
The character first popped up as a villain in 2007’s Spider-Man 3 with Topher Grace as Eddie Brock/Venom, but made little impact because of the quality of the film and Grace’s performance.
That’s one place where the movie truly excels, because Visual Effects Supervisor Sheena Duggal (who performed the same role on Venom, and oddly worked on the VFX for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, which featured a different Venom) and her team find a way to really exceed all expectations of what could be done visually with Carnage.
Hay en Venom: Habrá Matanza un Andy Serkis tras las cámaras que, más allá de lo formalmente servicial respecto a los numeritos de los protagonistas gracias a los efectos especiales, se permite el osado lujo de conectar a su película no única y lógicamente con el (odiado) Spider-Man 3 de Sam Raimi, el que ya tenía a Venom (la secuencia con la campana de la iglesia), sino con la competencia: esa misma iglesia donde se desarrolla el enfrentamiento entre Venom y Carnaza remite a la gótica catedral (gárgolas incluidas) del Batman de Tim Burton.
Because of this, die-hards might struggle to accept it, but I encourage you to look at it another way and consider director Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) and X2: X-Men United (2003).
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Directed by Peter Jackson
influenced Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018)
Serkis made his name by playing Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, and there are more than a few nods to those blockbusters, particularly in the form of the giant python, Kaa, who is voiced by Cate Blanchett and whose opening, scene-setting narration is so reminiscent of Blanchett as Galadriel, narrating the opening to The Fellowship of the Ring that it has to be intentional.
The Big Sleep (1946)
Directed by Howard Hawks
influenced Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Characters
Its chief difference — and a brilliant angle — is that Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe isn’t a tough, quick-witted and verbose gumshoe like Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep or Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake but rather a shuffling, mumbling slob played by Elliott Gould.
But after the Academy Award-winning “The Theory of Everything” (2014) and the recent and less edifying Emilia Clarke vehicle “Me Before You” (2016), are we in danger of overdoing this theme and turning it into a kind of “My Left Foot” art film franchise?
The film’s third act follows a familiar tactic last seen in the weepie Me Before You, setting a dangerous precedent that the only agency – and “freedom” – for disabled people comes in death.
Much like last year’s Me Before You which also dealt with an adventurous man’s life drastically turned upside down, Breathe explores the often frustrating restrictions of disabled life although this time with more extreme circumstances, but from a far less technologically advanced standpoint.
Garfield’s earnest public image combined with his achingly sincere theatrical history—Never Let Me Go, Hacksaw Ridge, Silence, Breathe, his recent turn as Prior in the latest revival of Angels in America—makes the believability of his asshole-gone-wild character all the more unexpected.
For Garfield , after the strenuous heroics of “Hacksaw Ridge,” “Silence” and “Breathe,” it must have been a relief to play a deadbeat who smokes, drinks, has sex, breaks into apartments, crashes parties and beats up naughty kids (not all at the same time).
Altman is known for his eclectic casts, but this one might top the list: Bouton (a Major League Baseball pitcher), Nina van Pallandt (a baroness, a calypso singer, and Clifford Irving’s girlfriend at the time of his fake Howard Hughes biography), Mark Rydell (later the Oscar-nominated director of On Golden Pond ), Sterling Hayden (the ever-mercurial actor used by Kubrick in The Killing and Dr. Strangelove ), and an uncredited Arnold Schwarzenegger in only his second screen appearance.
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Directed by Martin Brest
influenced Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Characters
The actor — who spends much of the film dressed in Eddie Murphy’s outfit from Beverly Hills Cop for reasons unclear beyond the first name his character and the comedian have in common — shares a story credit with writer Kelly Marcel.
On Friday, Netflix unveiled its latest acquisition from a major Hollywood studio with Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle , which was originally a product of Warner Bros. and was directed by Andy Serkis, the motion-capture master behind Gollum in the Lord of the Rings franchise and Caesar in the new Planet of the Apes franchise.
After Warner Bros. started developing a new, technologically advanced update of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book stories in 2012 – with directors as varied as Steve Kloves, Alejandro G. Inarritu and Alfonso Cuaron attached – producers finally settled on hiring motion-capture pioneer Serkis (Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, Caesar in the rebooted Planet of the Apes) for what would be his directorial debut.
Serkis—who has also played motion-capture luminaries such as Star Wars ’ Snoke, Planet of the Apes ’ Caesar, and Tintin ’s Captain Haddock—seems to have directed all his attention to Mowgli ’s animal creations.
Directed by Andy Serkis, himself a mo-cap specialist who has played everyone from Gollum in Lord of the Rings to Caesar in the Planet of the Apes series, Mowgli at times feels — and I mean this as a compliment — like the psychic runoff hiding beneath Disney’s colorful, kid-friendly Jungle Book pictures.
Andy Serkis – renowned for his motion-capture effects work in the Planet of the Apes series and Lord of the Rings – brings his experience and talent to this project with one goal in mind: make these creatures live and breathe.
That project passed through the hands of a number of directors, including Steve Kloves, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Ron Howard, before Andy Serkis — the performance capture genius known for his portrayals of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and Caesar in the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy — landed the job.
Overseeing it all is Serkis, who understands the technology required to get the necessary virtual performances better than almost anyone, but demonstrates almost no vision as a director (this despite showing promise with earnest awards-bait drama “Breathe” and dark, ultra-ambitious CG “Jungle Book” adaptation “Mowgli”).
Hardy’s vision won out in the end, and who better to bring Brock back to the screen than the man who made the de-facto most violent Jungle Book film?