1st Look: “Venom” Full Trailer

This is the first full trailer for the upcoming Marvel universe movie Venom, and whatever they were thinking when they did that appalling first teaser, well — they’re no longer thinking that. The cinema verité style of the previous trailer was very droll, but was notably Venom-free. That’s been fixed. Welcome to the Spider-Man-fueled world of Eddie Brock. Pause the SCIFI.radio music stream while you watch this.

You may want to watch this in a darkened room. You may not. It’s pretty rough stuff for a Marvel movie.

Tom Hardy is finally convincing as the human/alien symbiote pairing known as Venom.  At the same time, it’s got all the visual cinematic techniques that have become the trademark of previous MCU films. There are conflicted characters, charming characters (sometimes the same ones), extreme action, great (and sometimes visually stunning) CGI, and legends writ large. It’s an interesting mix, though.

In that first teaser, perhaps director  Ruben Fleischer was trying to demonstrate that what he was doing was, in fact, a labor of the cinematic arts. It’s easy for a director’s craft to be subliminated by the bang-pow-SWOOSH! of your typical superhero fare. Perhaps we get the best of both worlds. Still present in the new trailer is the strong film noir approach to the visuals we saw in the first teaser, but the aimless choppy jumpcutting from the teaser now gives way to actual story elements and bits of Tom Hardy’s characterization of Eddie Brock, tabloid-grade reporter.

All the little bits we saw from the teaser make sense in a new context, and now that we can actually see what Fleischer is doing as a director, it all makes a lot more sense. There’s a big difference between being coy and being so abstract that nobody can make heads or tails of what you’re doing. Fleischer apparently got the memo.

We also get to see the duality of the character, an inner voice in Eddie Brock’s head, with whom Eddie does not necessarily see eye to eye all the time. Inner conflict in a lead role is not normally something we see in such a literal way.  It had to have been a screenwriter’s delight.

Finally, finally, we’re looking forward to seeing this film.

Venom comes from Sony Pictures, stars Tom Hardy in the title role, and hits the cinemas October 15, 2018.

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Gene Turnbow

President of Krypton Media Group, Inc., radio personality and station manager of SCIFI.radio. Part writer, part animator, part musician, part illustrator, part programmer, part entrepreneur – all geek.