FLYING SERKIS

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

- MARTYN PALMER

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.”