Sony Pictures dropped the first anticipated look at October's Venom movie, which casts the brooding Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, a troubled man who will bond with a living symbiote to become the "lethal protector" of the title. Venom's origins are closely tied to Marvel's famous wall-crawler, Spider-Man, but because Sony shares the rights to Spidey with Marvel, the web-slinger can't give birth to Venom the same way that he did in the comics (more on that later). However, the new trailer did clear up one huge mystery about the alien's origin. At least we know it WILL be alien:
The photo above, taken from the first Venom trailer, shows an emergency crew showing up at the site of a downed space shuttle. You can see the craft on the left-hand side of the image, and it's much larger in this next screen grab:
We're jumping to a conclusion, but it's safe to assume that while Venom is NOT connected to the movie Life (as was once rumored), the space craft that crashes on our planet will be responsible for bringing the alien symbiote that we see later to Earth. While half of the Venom trailer follows Tom Hardy's character, Eddie Brock, as he gets an MRI, the other half shows the living, moving symbiote as it moves from the crash site to the labs of some shady-looking scientists (one of which will be confirmed co-star Jenny Slate):
In the original Marvel Comics, the symbiote connected with Spider-Man while the hero participated in The Secret Wars (long story). Basically, every Marvel hero and villain was beamed to a planet to battle for the benefit of The Beyonder. Spider-Man was looking for a way to repair his tattered costume, and he instead found a black ball that created a form-fitting costume. It looked like this:
Only, Spidey later learned that the "suit" was alive, and it was taking over his life. He separated himself from the suit, and it escaped to Eddie Brock... a man who hated Peter Parker and, thereby, hated Spider-Man.
Obviously, Ruben Fleischer's Venom can't take that clear path. The Secret Wars would be impossible to stage, and Spider-Man's not available for this movie (that we know of). But this teaser suggests that, at the very least, the symbiote will be alien. I wonder how much more of its origin we will learn in this movie?
Venom will be in theaters on October 5. It's not connected to the Marvel movies, but is meant to stand on its own. Head over here to see that trailer again. And keep it locked to CinemaBlend for all that we continue to learn about Tom Hardy's take on the Eddie Brock saga.
