Venom: Let There Be Carnage is the only love story…
…where the couple fights over eating brains.
The Short Take:
Entirely carried by the charm of Tom Hardy bickering with its title character, Venom: Let There Be Carnage offers a straightforwardly zany ride. I recommend, but promise me you won’t overthink it.
Image Credit: NY Times
[WARNING: Spoilers need this entire review to survive.]
The Long Take:
Harry and Sally. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Han Solo and Princess Leia.
Eddie and Venom.
Yes, I would add the disgraced journalist and his alien symbiote to that list of iconic couples. They see the world in completely different ways, their personalities clash, and they can’t stand each other. But, most importantly, they are reluctant to admit that, in spite of all the fighting, they love each other.
Multiple critics in my usual rotation call Venom: Let There Be Carnage (the sequel to the 2018 box office smash, Venom) a “love story,” or a “rom com,” and I completely agree. I would even go further to say that this is the main selling point of the film.
If the original Venom — in which the ravenous alien escapes laboratory captivity and discovers that he can only thrive in Eddie Brock’s body — is the “meet-cute,” this sequel is the rocky patch and reconciliation. When we see Venom and Eddie at the start of the film, they’re barely cohabitating. Eddie forbids Venom from eating human brains (even those of bad guys) but Venom explains that he needs a specific stimulant, phenethylamine, to survive. Eddie makes him settle for chicken brains and chocolate, and Venom resents him for it.
At first glance the Eddie/Venom relationship may appear to be a buddy comedy. My list of dynamic duos could have easily referenced Lethal Weapon, Rush Hour, Bad Boys, or even the Clerks franchise. But I’m jumping on the rom com bandwagon here not only because that makes the film more innovative and inclusive, but because the film itself signals to us that this is the case. According to my more generous interpretation of what it’s doing, at least. But, I mean, they end up on a beach watching the sun set and Eddie says, “Did you just say you love me?” to Venom. What could be more romantic?
Most noticeably, there’s an extended sequence in which Venom, having just broken up with Eddie, hops from host body to host body until he finds himself at a masquerade rave. With a thumping beat, flashing lights, and plenty of glow stick necklaces to go around, Venom finally feels at home, like he no longer has to hide. The partygoers assume he’s wearing a high-budget costume (“Whoaaa, is that Japanese?” one asks), and no one is afraid of him. The scene culminates in Venom commandeering a microphone and giving a rousing yet heartfelt speech about tolerance. “We all have to live together on this big ball of rock, ya know?” The crowd cheers and he drops the mic before exiting stage left.
Could this be the filmmakers exploitation of a “coming out of the closet” narrative as a cheap metaphor-driven joke, unknowingly (I would hope) at the LGBTQ community’s expense? Of course. Venom does say he’s out of the “Eddie closet,” which could distance his inspirational monologue from any discussion of his sexuality. And, as a straight cisgender woman, I don’t want to speak for the LBGTQ community and presume that I’m getting this interpretation right. But Venom’s dialogue feels so sincere to me, like he is actually struggling with his own identity, and not just in the context of his general “alien” status on earth, but more specifically in response to his falling out with Eddie immediately prior. He speaks to the crowd unfiltered and uninterrupted, and the camera holds on him in a way that allows the film to let him be.
If we place Venom back amongst the other characters, Venom: Let There Be Carnage continues to break the heteronormative room com mold by creating what feels like a very modern web of potentially polyamorous relationships between Venom, Eddie, Ann (Eddie’s ex), and Dan (Anne’s fiancé). Most of them flirt with multiple other members of this “team” facing off against Carnage, and no one seems mad or jealous about that. Venom continually pushes Eddie to try to win Anne back, but he himself just wants to be closer to her. In one of my favorite scenes, Anne shamelessly flirts with Venom through temporary host Mrs. Chen, the local convenience store owner. And by the end they’re even telling Dan, who typically would be the despised competition, that they like him. Dan never threatens to leave Anne if she can’t choose, either. He just kind of goes along for the ride. If we think back to the rom com overlay, this is actually quite a subversion of an archetype. Right now I’m thinking of Pierce Brosnan’s character in Mrs. Doubtfire and how we’re not supposed to like him. He’s a villain. In Venom 2, Dan acts more like a sidekick.
Knowing that Tom Hardy helped developed the story for this film reassures me in my reading of the narrative as subversive. As an actor, I’ve always found his work to be weird, complex, and almost alluring, even when he plays characters I’m repulsed by (i.e. in The Revenant). The Big Picture podcast did a fantastic episode last year that created the Tom Hardy “hall of fame,” and in that episode they noted that he’s a character actor who, despite being handsome enough and charismatic enough to be a more traditional movie star leading man, chooses roles where he has to wear a mask and obscure his face with makeup and prosthetics. And whether it’s an accent like Bane’s or his willingness to let Charlize Theron overshadow him in Mad Max: Fury Road, I like him more for the quirky choices he makes.
The Venom movies simply do not work without Tom Hardy. When watching either film, I find myself overlooking all kinds of leaps in logic, random plot turns, and a lack of character development because I am so entertained by the dynamic between Eddie and Venom. Nothing else has to be that good because Hardy is so good. And trust me, this movie explains very little and things randomly happen just because all the time. The suspension of disbelief required to have a good time is size-able. Notice that I’m not even discussing Carnage or Woody Harrelson. (And I don’t plan on it.)
I’ve been trying to pin down why exactly I love watching Tom Hardy essentially talk to himself for an entire movie, and I think part of it is his intrinsic mystique as an actor and part of it is his penchant for all things oddball. He can sell camp in a way few other actors can. I want to punch Eddie Brock in the face and give him a hug at the same time. His comedic timing, especially with physical comedy, is surprisingly great. The way he voices Venom also makes him quite endearing. The writing of the character helps, of course, but there’s something in Hardy’s intonation when uttering Venom’s lines that brings out the trippiness of having a huge, brain-hungry alien with sharp teeth who also gives his human host life advice and cooks breakfast to cheer him up.
[Repeating the SPOILER warning from the top of the review because I’m about to talk about the post-credits scene from Let There Be Carnage. It’s a doozy, so be prepared. I will also discuss spoilers for Loki and the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer.]
Until now, Venom has delighted audiences as a stand-alone offshoot of Sony’s Spider-man universe. I have had zero complaints about this. But once I saw a post-credits scene that essentially opens an inter-studio door so Venom and Eddie can waltz right into the MCU, I was overjoyed. How fun would it be to see the terrifying yet tender-hearted Venom interact with the plucky gee-willickers Tom Holland Spider-man?! What earnest yet cutting to the quick one-liner will the spiderling use to describe a toothy symbiote nagging his host/domestic partner? A transfer from the Sony-verse to the MCU, though, seems like it might be tricky; Venom has historically been a villain for Spider-man, but in the Tom Hardy films he squarely falls into the anti-hero camp. Towards the end of the Carnage post-credits scene, we see Venom lick the hotel room TV screen when he sees Peter Parker, and he seems to shift from the Venom we know and love to something more classically sinister. I’m not sure I want to see this version of Venom as an antagonist. There’s also an overall tone issue that would prevent a “clean” transfer. Van Lathan of The Ringerverse podcast said it best when he very plainly noted that “MCU heroes don’t eat their enemies.” What is so hilarious in Let There Be Carnage may not fly in the more wholesome MCU.
Regardless of whether or not Venom and Spidey will play nice when the teased crossover takes place, this post-credits scene adds yet another datapoint to the “What is the multiverse of madness and Phase 4 really about?” discussion. Eddie and Venom’s more rustic accommodations —which look like they came straight out of Bladerunner, by the way — flicker and shift to a much warmer and more comfortable hotel room. Eddie at first assumes that Venom’s symbiote hive mind download must have caused the distortion of reality, but Venom assures him that no, that was just a coincidence. It wasn’t him. Is the transformation of the room the result of The Sacred Timeline in Loki coming undone? Or is this another view of whatever Doctor Strange botches when he tries to help Peter in the No Way Home trailer?
This scene nudges me more towards the latter because I get the impression that something has gone wrong, that there has been a singular incident with a massive ripple effect. This isn’t just natural multiversal chaos now being permitted. It feels like someone messed something more specific up and now Eddie and Venom are in the wrong universe. (Anne will be so worried about them! What if they can never get back to her and Dan?!) And I think that future films providing different perspectives on a central multiverse goof-up makes more sense to me than relying on MCU fans to have seen all of a Disney+ show (no matter how amazing it was!). The events of Loki may have made it possible for my theoretical goof-up to happen, but I think the major “snap-comparable” event has yet to come. Could we get multiverse answers AND a Venom appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home? That would be some brains we could sink our teeth into.