If you haven’t seen it yet, there are still a few days left to catch up on Netflix: The Marvel film Venom features a completely freewheeling Tom Hardy as an antihero.
Netflix is once again removing several titles from its database towards the end of the month. One of the first is the Marvel film Venom. In it, ex-DC villain Tom Hardy rather involuntarily dons the symbiote costume.
What follows is actually a conventional superhero film that becomes a unique experience thanks to Hardy’s eccentric performance. But what makes Hardy’s performance so special?
Venom disappears from Netflix: Catch up on the movie because of Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy almost single-handedly makes Venom seem like an original superhero movie. The Sony production, which is not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, follows a predictable plot.
The ingredients: Journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), an unscrupulous scientist named Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) and alien life forms. One of the symbiotes jumps over to Eddie, who then has to share his body with the idiosyncratic (and expressive) alien Venom.
Watch the German trailer for Venom:
The popular villain and/or antihero from the Spider-Man comics looks like a horror monster with his white eyes and bared teeth. Despite this, the film was made in a comparatively family-friendly way and was rated FSK 12 in Germany. Thanks to Tom Hardy in particular, the film looks wilder than it actually is.
Tom Hardy acts as if four symbiotes are breathing down his neck, not just one
The actor who plays Bane in The Dark Knight Rises feeds his Eddie Brock/Venom with a manic playful energy, so that the inside approaches the dangerously grinning exterior of the tar-like symbiote.
What Venom’s script lacks in character development, Tom Hardy compensates for with tics, dialects and plenty of mumbling. This can get on your nerves in the long run, but it also visibly sets Hardy’s performance apart from his dignified colleagues in spandex.
Even without the symbiote, Hardy’s sweaty performance makes Eddie seem like a half-silky character. With Venom as his alter ego, he transforms into an eccentric anti-hero. With the founding member of Sony’s own Marvel universe, you often wonder whether he wants to save or eat his counterpart.
