Perhaps – but it’s this chaotic quality that gives the film most of its drive and Hardy’s Venom charisma, and also makes this version of Eddie Brock potentially the most interesting antihero in superhero cinema today.
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Hardy’s spontaneity led to an unexpected scene that embedded itself in moviegoers’ memories as one of the funniest and most bizarre scenes seen in a superhero movie yet.Ĭlambering into a tank full of crustaceans is hardly befitting of an antihero, you say. That’s exemplified by a scene where he climbs into a tank full of lobsters, which Hardy famously ad-libbed: Fleischer told CinemaBlend that Hardy immediately decided he wanted to climb in upon discovering production had planned for a lobster tank to be the centrepiece of the restaurant the scene was set in. Hardy leapt into the role with all the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old given his first superhero action figure.
Hardy had to play out a new origin story, one that would be focused on Brock and the symbiote bonding as Brock undergoes one of the lowest points in his life – leading to the two eventually understanding that they are both outcasts who can be something greater together.
In Venom, Hardy turned Brock into a well-meaning but clumsy everyman trapped on a warped roller coaster ride that calls upon elements of body horror, classic comic book action, and comedy.
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He’d previously appeared in a more true-to-comics interpretation in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, but this new take on Venom was free of the Spider-Man frame, presenting a blank canvas open to interpretation by the actor and screenwriter – and director Ruben Fleischer’s casting of Hollywood bad boy Tom Hardy proved to be an inspired one. Forget the spandex, though – as 2018’s Venom and 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage (now available on Astro Best for Malaysian viewers) showed, Tom Hardy’s ghastly, gloopy symbiote Venom is one of the most thrilling antiheroes in movies today.Įddie Brock was already one of comics’ most famous antiheroes when his first solo movie hit the silver screen in 2018. Cinema has long been fascinated by antiheroes – characters who walk a morally ambiguous line, appealing to our darker nature.Ĭonsider how antiheroes have consistently proven a hit with audiences who seek nuance and moral ambiguity and cinema’s superhero boom, and it’s no surprise that studios have made strenuous efforts to establish a premiere antihero in the cultural hivemind, from Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool to Ben Affleck’s Batman.