The first installment only featured a pair of Symbiotes, so it was inevitable that Venom: Let There Be Carnage was going to raise the stakes. After all, it’s written in the small print of the superhero genre that each new entry in a multi-film series must get bigger and more expensive, especially if the last one earned $850 million at the box office.
We already know that we’re getting a scenery-chewing showdown for the ages between Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady, with the iconic arch-enemies set to dominate the proceedings in terms of both story and spectacle. Naomie Harris’ Frances Barrison is also set to follow in the footsteps of her comic book counterpart by becoming Shriek, and we might even be getting a fourth alien parasite as part of the bargain.
Stephen Graham will play a cop named Mulligan, who forms an alliance with Eddie to help him find the remains of Kasady’s victims. Those familiar with Marvel lore will know that a police officer named Peter Mulligan ends up becoming Venom and Carnage’s offspring Toxin, and Graham revealed that his character is already mad at the world.
“He’s got a chip on his shoulder for a lot of reasons. There was a major incident as a young rookie, where he shot a young girl, it mentally scarred him and he lost the hearing in his left ear, which became a disability for his police career and got him assigned to menial jobs. He was constantly overlooked by the hierarchy of the police system, and he’s an angry, bitter man.”
It would be a major surprise if Toxin didn’t appear in the third act of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, unless Sony is planning to have Graham stick around and save him for the next installment. Then again, four CGI masses going toe-to-toe for the climax sounds like overkill, especially if the effects aren’t up to scratch and render everything a pale soup of weightless nothingness.
