The latest trailer for Sony’s Venom delivers the most extensive look yet at the superpowered title character played by Tom Hardy.
The film’s first teaser focused on Hardy and the other human cast members, with no footage of the actual alien “symbiote” (basically, it’s a sentient costume with a bad attitude). When we actually got to see Venom a few months later, some people were really into it. This new trailer goes even further than those previous glimpses of oozing CGI skin and enormous fangs — it’s got big Venom action scenes and even a full-on, joke-y symbiote monologue.
Venom was created by David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane (who drew on previous storylines about the symbiote costume). He started out as Spider-Man’s enemy, and that’s the role he filled on-screen a decade ago in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3.
But — as is often the case with comic book characters — Spider-Man and Venom have sometimes shifted into being uneasy allies, and it looks like the new movie will focus on Venom as an antihero rather than outright bad guy. Venom is directed by Zombieland‘s Ruben Fleischer, with an impressive cast that also includes Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed and Jenny Slate.
By the way, you may have noticed the “In Association With Marvel” card at the beginning the trailer. That phrasing is a little hint at the film’s convoluted connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: While a deal between Sony (which controls the film rights to Spider-Man and associated characters) and Disney/Marvel allowed the studios to collaborate on Spider-Man: Homecoming, Venom is meant to kick off a new cinematic universe for Sony, built around Spider-Man’s supporting characters like Black Cat and Silver Sable.