12 Images From Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Plus New Details About The Plot And Characters
Sony Pictures released more images from their upcoming film, Venom: Let There Be Carnage that showcase the true terror of Carnage.
Not only do we have more images from Venom: Let There Be Carnage, but Sony also released detailed production notes that give us a better idea of what to expect from the upcoming film.
First, the relationship between Eddie and Venom will be front and center in the film. Producer Avi Arad explains, “Obviously there is danger and mistrust in the beginning, but they’ve learned to live with each other.”
He adds, “It’s become a complicated marriage. Their codependence forces them to stay together, even though they’ve had it with each other. They’re going to have to come to an understanding.”
In fact, according to the production notes “that shaky marriage is starting to crumble.”
That’s despite Eddie and Venom’s lives appearing to be on the upswing. Venom is able to chow down on evildoers and Eddie’s landed a career-defining interview with serial killer Cletus Kasady.
However, “their constant bickering escalates until it finally devolves into a violent manic battle as they try to figure out who is throwing who out of the apartment and the body they share. Both Venom and Eddie are determined to figure out if they really do need each other after all.”
Director Andy Serkis even describes the film as a “love story.” But he adds the caveat, “But not the love story you might think.”
He explains, “It’s very much about the extraordinary relationship between symbiote and host. Any love affair has its pitfalls, its high points and low points; Venom and Eddie’s relationship absolutely causes problems and stress, and they have a near-hatred for each other. But they have to be with each other – they can’t live without each other. That’s companionship – love – the things that relationships are really about.”
Serkis went on to describe the pair ass “Jekyll and Hyde.”
““Eddie is rather arrogant, thinking life owes him a favor. Venom is the complete opposite, unfiltered and speaking his mind totally. And they’re trapped together. After meeting in the first movie, they’ve now got the seven-year-itch; they’ve had enough of each other and can’t wait to be apart,” he elaborated.
Related: Sony Releases New Synopsis For Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Reveals Film’s Rating
The film’s screenplay writer Kelly Marcel further discussed the relationship between Eddie and Brock saying, “Eddie and Venom have been living together, sharing one body, for a while now. They know each other inside and out, literally. And like any close-quarter living situation, their ticks and foibles are starting to wear a little thin on each other.”
Marcel added, “They have been forced together through circumstance and this movie asks the question of whether there is a will to save the relationship or go their separate ways. Are they just cohorts through happenstance or do they actually belong together?”
The production notes go on to reveal just how Carnage will come about in the film. It states, “After their epic breakup, though, it becomes clear that neither is going to make it on his own. When part of the symbiote leaps into Cletus Kasady moments before his execution, the serial killer becomes host for Carnage, an even-larger, even-deadlier, and much-more-malevolent spawn of the alien, ruthless and pure evil.”
Speaking to Carnage, Arad says, “Carnage is who the fans have been waiting for, finally making his big screen debut. He’s Venom’s ultimate adversary, stronger and more violent in every way. It doesn’t help that serial killer Cletus Kasady is Carnage’s host, enhancing his maniacal worldview into something incredibly sinister. In the comics, Carnage is Venom’s offspring – his ‘son,’ if you will – which makes the conflict between them far greater.”
Marcel adds, “Carnage is such a huge part of and the most beloved villain in the Venomverse. Bonding with Cletus, together they are a psychotic, dangerous, and insane killing machine.”
The difference between Eddie’s relationship with Venom and Kasady’s relationship with Cletus is made crystal clear in the notes as it states, “Kasady – a killer even before gaining Carnage’s powers – doesn’t feel Eddie’s need to try to restrain the symbiote.”
The notes also claim, “Though he seems unassuming, even gentle – quoting poetry, painting art on the walls of his cell, and otherwise exhibiting a very active mind – he is a murderer, rotten to the core.”
Serkis explains, “Cletus is twisted, devious, manipulative, and damaged as anything, but in Woody’s portrayal, you can’t help but love him. He could have been just quips and arch, but Woody sits him on a tightrope – a child in one moment, and a deep, dark killer in the next, a real vulnerability underneath it all.”
Related: Carnage Arrives In New Trailer For Venom: Let There Be Carnage
Harrelson, who plays Kasady, added his own comments, “He’s a psychotic killer. He had a nasty upbringing, and now feels compelled to take revenge on the people he felt were responsible for the state he was in.”
Interestingly enough, Harrelson notes that Kasady believes Eddie to be a possible friend. He explains, “Even before he meets Eddie, Cletus has a sense that Eddie is going to be a friend – a lifeline, a guy who believes in him.”
Venom and Carnage won’t be the only symbiotes showing up in the film. Naomie Harris will play Shriek.
Marcel details that Shriek is just as “psychotic” as Carnage stating, “Naomie’s character, Shriek, has her own superpower. She is as psychotic as Cletus and quite the powerhouse.”
As for the character’s backstory, Serkis gave us some details, “We talked a lot about what her voice would be – she’s been kept in a soundproof box, unable to communicate verbally for 25 years. How do you make that believable, that this is the first time she’s talked in all that time?”
Harris went on to discuss the character’s shriek, “The biggest key to unlocking Shriek is her voice. It’s her weapon and her most defining feature. Andy pointed out that when she meets Cletus again for the first time in decades, it’s the first time she’s using her voice, so it’s croaky.”
“When I found her voice, her husky voice, her damaged voice, I had a sense of who she was. I used her voice as a cloak – that’s how I got into her,” she added.
Pivoting back to the idea that the film is a love story, the production notes claim that Frances Barrison aka Shriek and Kasady are actually “really in love.”
Serkis provided some more details, “Frances Barrison and Cletus Kasady complement each other. It’s another of the film’s love stories: they have suffered trauma after trauma, they have been torn apart, and you long for them to get back together. When they do, it’s romantic, epic, operatic.”
The theme of love is also shown in Eddie’s relationship with Anne Weying, played by Michelle Williams.
Marcel asserts, “Eddie and Anne have deep love for each other, but it seems like they just can’t find a way to translate that love into something sustainable.”
“Anne wants something grounded and safe and Eddie desperately wants to be able to give that to her, but he’s living with an eight-foot alien inside him, so there is absolutely nothing safe or grounded about his life right now. There will always be a push-pull between them, but while Venom is in the picture, three’s a crowd,” Marcel adds.
Arad also states, “As much as Eddie loves her, he does not know how to do it, which leads them to a breakup.”
However, interestingly enough he also states that Venom is infatuated with her.
He explains, “On the other hand, Venom is far more romantic. He will do anything to have Anne in their lives because as far as he’s concerned, Eddie and Venom are one. Venom is totally infatuated with her and wants her to be part of their little family. He’s very protective. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of a human and an alien – the alien shows better understanding of what his partner needs, which is quite unique.”
“The undercurrent is that Eddie and Anne really do care for each other, but they are not suitable for each other, because Eddie is only ever thinking about himself,” asserts Serkis.
The final main character in the film is Detective Mulligan of the SFPD played by Stephen Graham.
Graham explains his character, “He’s got a chip on his shoulder for a lot of reasons. There was a major incident as a young rookie, where he shot a young girl – it mentally scarred him and he lost the hearing in his left ear, which became a disability for his police career and got him assigned to menial jobs. He was constantly overlooked by the hierarchy of the police system, and he’s an angry, bitter man.”
And the most recent slight is Eddie getting the interview with Kasady. Graham elaborates, “Eddie is getting the last interview with Cletus Kasady – something he feels he should be entitled to, and not some snotty rogue reporter.”
Venom: Let There Be Carnage will arrive in theaters on October 1, 2021. The film is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “intense sequences of violence and action, some language, disturbing material and suggestive references.”
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