It’s finally here – the new trailer for the Spider-Man universe sequel to Sony Picture’s surprise Marvel Comics hit Venom. In this one, Tom Hardy is back as Eddie Brock and his Venom symbiote, and has to deal with Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady and his symbiote, the Carnage symbiote. The only thing that keeps Venom on the side of good – just barely – is Eddie Brock. Carnage, however, is piloted by an irretrievable madman.

The trailer opens with Venom doing his best to cook a huge breakfast for he and Eddie to share, and it’s as much of a disgusting mess as he makes of Eddie’s apartment in the process of making it. We see live animals in the apartment, presumably for Venom to snack on later.

The Venom symbiote is barely controllable under the best of circumstances. The Carnage symbiote is piloted by somebody who is, if anything, less controllable than the Carnage symbiote itself, if that’s possible. The horror of what an unrestrained symbiote respresents provides the perfect fever pitch villain to make Eddie Brock the hero the film deserves.

The “Martin Scorcese” stylishness of the first film is repeated by director Andy Serkis, who clearly knows precisely what he’s doing with the visual tropes. Every such film needs a bit of leavening, and the Venom symbiote provides much of the comedy relief. Eddie Brock’s inner voice, urging him to do things he might regret later, is like the one most of us have – except that his is a real, separate intelligence that inhabits his body.

The IMDB page on the film doesn’t cover much of the plot, but frankly, the bones of it were set up pretty plainly in the end scenes of the first film, with Woody Harrelson in restraints in prison. It isn’t until this trailer, though, that our worst fears are confirmed – Cletus Kasady is sent to be executed by lethal injection, and this triggers the immersion of Carnage symbiote. There just aren’t too many major story arcs here that we can’t predict, so the suspense isn’t whether Venom and Carnage will meet each other head on in combat, but exactly how it happens, who else dies in the interrim, what remaining semblance of normalcy Eddie Brock has to sacrifice in order to defeat Carnage, and whether Carnage escapes at the end.

It’s not deep, revealing cinema, but that’s not what it’s made to be. It’s a popcorn movie, and it looks like it’ll be a great one.

Venom: Let Their Be Carnage stars Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson, and is scheduled for theatrical release September 24, 2021.

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