Sony released the official trailer for the new super anti-hero film, Venom, and it's wall-to-wall faves. Like an end-of-season sale at Supreme, this trailer features everyone you've ever wanted to be friends with and is maybe-probably pretty good!
Venom stars Tom Hardy, a man who looks like this:
Hardy plays Eddie Brock, a reporter who gets contaminated by a slimy black alien symbiote. After the symbiote, Brock is Venom. We know that, before the symbiote, Brock is salt-of-the-earth and a truth-seeker because he talks like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront.
Marlon Brando is a man who used to look like this:
Quite frankly that’s all I need to know. Like, sign me up immediately, put me down for Venom 2, buy me the merchandise, throw me a Venom birthday party where everyone is covered in black slime and speaking like a dockworker in the '40s. This is all I need.
Well, not all I need. Venom also stars perennial fave Michelle Williams, also known as your best friend, also known as Busy Phillips' IRL best friend.
Michelle Williams plays a character who talks like Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors and wears a wig that looks like it is from a collection called Nicole: Wigs by Nicole Kidman. So, again, I am sold.
It is unclear who Michelle Williams plays, but based on the hair and the history of superhero movies, I assume she is a busy attorney who is imperiled by the generic-but-still-very-cute corporate bad guy played by Riz Ahmed.
Riz Ahmed, delightfully, looks like this:
The movie also co-stars eternal fave Jenny Slate as a whistle-blower at Riz Ahmed's company. I would honestly pay money to watch Jenny Slate do anything. Jenny Slate in Tying My Shoes! Sign me up. So, the chance to watch Jenny Slate whistle-blow is super great. I love music.
The idea behind Venom is that he is like the anti-Spiderman. Well, that’s not really true and if you actually know what you’re talking about as a comic book fan, please don’t email me. I’ve already emailed myself. The basic premise is that Eddie Brock is a newspaper reporter like Peter Parker, but less like Peter Parker than like Marlon Brando. Got it?
After some sort of contamination with by the symbiote, Eddie suddenly starts hearing voices that tell him to do things to bad people, so he’s basically me at happy hour. So, that’s the plot of the movie: Young Marlon Brando has three Appletinis and takes New York by storm.
Venom is in theaters October 5.
R. Eric Thomas is a columnist for ELLE.com, where he skewers politics, pop culture, celebrity shade, and schadenfreude. He is also the author of Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, a memoir-in-essays.
