If there was a complaint about the first teaser for Sony’s Venom movie it’s that…well, it didn’t have any Venom in it. Makes sense for them to want to keep the symbiote under wraps, especially with director Ruben Fleischer clearly aiming to make a kind of superhero horror movie. Well all of those complaints can be put to rest now because the latest trailer gives us our first genuine look at Venom in action.
Tom Hardy stars as Eddie Brock, a reporter who comes in contact with the same alien symbiote that once bonded with Spider-Man and gave him his cool, hyped-up black suit. The movie version finds Eddie investigating the Life Foundation, with Riz Ahmed playing its leader (and Marvel villain) Carlton Drake. In the comics Drake used his foundation’s resources to create multiple symbiotes that were then taken down by Venom and Spidey. It looks like he’s got similar goals in the movie. Jenny Slate plays a whistleblower who informs Eddie about the Life Foundation, while Michelle Williams is Ann Weying. In the comics she is Eddie’s ex-wife and eventually bonds with the symbiote to become She-Venom. No sign of Woody Harrelson’s character, reportedly that of Carnage.
I love this trailer. It gives Hardy a chance to show off multiple personalities and reveals the Venom symbiote to be a force of nature that will protect itself at all costs. And the final scene in which Eddie becomes Venom proves incredibly satisfying, even though its look doesn’t vary much from what we saw in Spider-Man 3. Just knowing that it’s Hardy and not Topher Grace helps a lot.
Venom hits theaters on October 5th.
