With “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” director Andy Serkis wanted to really sink his teeth into the odd-couple relationship between an investigative journalist and the alien inhabiting his body.
The new movie presents fresh challenges for Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock, who became the host body to the extraterrestrial symbiote known as Venom in 2018′s original movie, based on the Marvel comics.
“They’ve been living together for two years in a tiny apartment, and they’re getting on each other’s nerves,” Serkis told the Daily News.
“They can’t live without each other because chemically they’re intertwined. They can’t live with each other because they both want me-time,” Serkis said. Venom and Brock are “quite selfish and have different agendas. Eddie wants a sense of normality, and life to go back to normal. He’s kind of fed up with the whole symbiote thing.”
The dysfunctional bond between the headstrong duo is frequently magnified in the new film, out in theaters Friday, with the ever-hungry Venom obsessed with feasting on the brains of bad guys, and Eddie eager to keep a low profile.
Their journey becomes more complicated when Cletus Kasady, an incarcerated serial killer Eddie is reporting on, becomes interconnected with another alien symbiote, Carnage.
Like Venom, Carnage provides superhuman abilities to his host, and puts another voice inside his head.
“Cletus is a very twisted, brutalized character,” Serkis explained. “The relationship with the symbiotes is such that it amplifies the true nature of the host. Eddie is on a bit of a moral crusade because he’s an investigative journalist. The serial killer inside Cletus Kasady is now amplified through this extraordinary monster who is out for revenge and wants to tear the world apart.”
Joining the cast of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” is Naomie Harris, who plays Cletus’ superpowered lover, Shriek.
Helping to drive the story is a shared experience by Eddie, Cletus and Shriek, explained Serkis.
“They all have childhoods which are damaged childhoods, which affect their means of loving and connecting with other human beings,” Serkis, 57, said.
Serkis studied panels from the Marvel comic books featuring Carnage to determine the best way to depict the versatile villain.
“You kind of know where you are with Venom because he’s a truth-teller, and he is a very straightforward, blunt, battering-ram kind of energy, whereas Carnage is more slippery and idiosyncratic,” Serkis said.
The movie marks the latest massive franchise for Serkis, who as an actor often portrays characters using motion capture. His roles include Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings” films, Supreme Leader Snoke in the latest “Star Wars” trilogy, and Caesar in the rebooted “Planet of the Apes” movies.
The filmmaker loved what Hardy did with the first “Venom,” directed by Ruben Fleischer, which grossed more than $850 million.
Serkis was thrilled to team up with Hardy on the sequel.
“It really spawns from, I think, our shared sensibility, and the sorts of choices of characters that both of us have made in the past,” Serkis said. “Marginalized. Dark. I think we like to mess around in the darker end of the swimming pool, of the gene pool of darker characters. This seemed to be the perfect subject matter.”
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