Flying Serkis

Director ANDY SERKIS talks the return of Tom Hardy and making Marvel’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage…

Bringing to life extraordinary, much loved Marvel characters — including Eddie Brock, played by Tom Hardy, and his symbiote Venom who unwittingly unleash a terrifying villain, serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) and his alien alter-ego, the devastatingly destructive Carnage into the world – provided a unique storytelling opportunity with Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
“In many ways this kind of film is what I love about storytelling,” explains director Andy Serkis. “The way these comics work and the universe these characters exist in allows you so much — it allows for really truthful heartfelt emotional themes and it also allows for huge amounts of humour and thrills. There’s nothing black and white about Venom at all — there are so many grey areas and that’s true with both the characters of Venom and Eddie Brock and of Cletus Kasady and his symbiote Carnage.
“They are hugely damaged individuals and both have lots of baggage,” he continues. “In fact there isn’t a single character in the movie that doesn’t have that. And I love that you can really fully investigate the baggage that they are all carrying. And (screenwriter) Kelly Marcel has really extracted the most out of that with very complex underlying psychological issues with all of the characters and the thing that binds them is this notion of wanting family. They all strive to somehow connect and want an idea of what love is.”
Hardy returns as Eddie Brock, the investigative reporter who, as audiences around the world discovered in the hugely popular first film, has an unwelcome house guest inside his body — a ferocious, ever hungry alien symbiote with superpowers, known as Venom. Let There Be Carnage starts about a year later when Eddie and Venom are trying, and struggling, to live together. Eddie wants to keep a low profile, write his book and Venom wants more action.
“Eddie is probably the last person on the planet that you would want to share an apartment with,” laughs Serkis. “He’s pretty much self-obsessed and it’s no wonder his relationship with Anne (Michelle Williams) broke down because he’s not the most reliable partner to have but he’s got to try and keep Venom under wraps — that’s the deal. And they live together, they’ve had all this time together, and they wind each other up and that’s really the basis of their relationship in this second film. It’s moved on a stage — it’s not just Eddie suffering from living with a parasite; he’s living with a parasite.
“They have this arrangement where Eddie is like, ‘You live in my body, you live by my rules’ but Venom, of course can break out whenever he wants so there is this constant battle. ‘It’s my time — no, it’s my time!’ And yet, they kind of, weirdly get on. It’s that idea that once a symbiote is in your body it kind of reflects your personality and so Venom very much puts a mirror up to Eddie and shows him his foibles. And the way it has developed is that there is a loving nature, a sort of playfulness, and they both teach each other, they care for each other and are siblings to each other. And they are wrapped up in this melange of chaos,” he laughs. “Venom really does think that they should be out there saving the world and Eddie wants to keep it all under wraps because he knows that they will get into a shit load of trouble if they are seen.”
At the end of 2018’s Venom the audience was given a tantalising glimpse of serial killer Cletus Kasady who returns, with a vengeance, in Let There Be Carnage. He is being held in San Quentin prison, awaiting a possible death sentence, after a heinous killing spree. “In our film Eddie wants to write this book about serial killers and he wants to get the juice out of Kasady who is obviously a fascinating subject,” Serkis explains. “So Eddie wants something from Kasady — they’re sort of using each other and Cletus says, ‘Look, I will give you my life story if you will put this message out for me.’” But as the minutes tick by, Carnage is unleashed.
“Carnage is the symbiote of a very twisted and sophisticatedly cruel mind and yet he is also quite childish so we were trying to find physical ways to capture his movements,” says Serkis. “It’s like, if Venom was to run at him, how would he take that energy and dispel it? So there are all sorts of ways that he shifts and moves, he’s break-dancing, he twists and turns, he flies through the air and we see the elastication of his body and the way he sticks to things.
“We had a really interesting research period of working out how to make Carnage move in his own idiosyncratic, off kilter, really surprising and unpredictable manner. So the big break out from San Quentin is where we really see that for the first time. Carnage can become so many things at the same time — weapons can be formed out of his tendrils and he is more kind of octopus like and impossible to pin down.
Venom was a massive hit with audiences and Serkis stresses they were keen to build on that success, developing the story with its central character with the blend of action, darkness and humour. “There was something special about the first film and everybody was like, ‘how can we achieve that again?’” he says. “I think it’s a lot to do with the fact that Tom is so not interested in playing any kind of heroic character so it’s the anti-hero that Eddie Brock is with the flaws and the foibles that he has, is so appealing to people and there isn’t a single person who didn’t absolutely love the scene where he climbs into the lobster tank in the first movie. So with this, I was very conscious of ‘how do we keep that tone?’ It needs to feel real and grounded and you are not tipping a nod to the audience about the humour — as do the visual effects.
“I had the most joyous experience,” he says. “During pre-production and into principle photography, working with everyone, especially Tom and Woody, Stephen (Graham), Naomie (Harris), Michelle (Williams) and the rest of this fantastic cast, working with (director of photography) Bob Richardson again, the incredible crew, was fantastic. We had a good time making it.
Yes it was challenging and hard work plus I broke my hip during the middle of the shoot, which didn’t make it any easier but it was great. But I think we’ve hit the right tone right and I think it will be a great movie for people to go back into cinemas to see on a big screen. I think it has a really great mix of fantastic characters, humour, action and darkness.” ■