The Big Picture · Review · Top Five · Interview
October 5, 2021/ 102 min/ Sean Fennessy
Sean Fennessy talks 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage' with Van Lathan and Charles Holmes, the Midnight Boys, then the three of them count down their top five comic book movie sequels. Plus: Sean's interview with director Andy Serkis.
28 films across 5 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’With Van Lathan and Charles Holmes (the Midnight Boys)
Charles loved it without irony, calling it a rom-com about Eddie and Venom as a bickering old married couple. Van agrees it's a terrible movie by any normal metric but says he was never bored. Sean points to the 90-minute runtime, the low stakes (San Francisco, not the world), and a cast with nine combined Oscar nominations as evidence the movie knows exactly what it is.
The surprise hit this is a sequel to. Andy Serkis notes Tom Hardy's performance there was mostly internalized, a 'radio play' with Venom rarely onscreen; the sequel has him manifest fully.
Charles's comparison for the tone: 'Tom Hardy saw a Marriage Story and was essentially like, what if we replace all of the characters with shaken-up bottles of Mountain Dew.'
Van's touchstone for the film's operatic, gothic-romance streak. Andy Serkis independently cites the same movie later in the episode.
Van's example of another comic book sequel that lowered the stakes instead of raising them, James Mangold's Wolverine send-off.
The box-office comparison point (Venom's Thursday night take beat it), and Charles's example of a movie he thinks would've worked better as a straight martial-arts film without the CGI dragon finale.
The post-credits stinger pulls Eddie and Venom into a version of the Spider-Man universe via J. Jonah Jameson's broadcast; the three debate whether Venom belongs there.
Van's reference point for Michelle Williams, cast against type opposite a CGI symbiote.
Brought up via its trailer, which shows Michael Keaton's Vulture, suggesting Sony is building a Spider-Man-adjacent universe outside the MCU.
Referred to mid-conversation as 'Black Panther 2.' The group discusses Namor's casting and his history as an ally and enemy of the Avengers, X-Men, and Fantastic Four alike.
Name-checked (as 'Craven the Hunter') with Aaron Taylor-Johnson attached, part of the wider talk about Sony building its own Spider-Man-adjacent villain slate.
Sean's Top Five Comic Book Movie SequelsBest to worst
No. 1. Shared with Charles. Sean's case: the best movie featuring a superhero ever made, superhero movie or not.
No. 2. Shared with Van, at his No. 5. Tim Burton making his own comic book movie without studio interference: Max Shreck, the Penguin, and Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman.
No. 3. Shared with Charles, at his No. 5. You can't have Endgame without it, and it's the movie that put the whole Marvel universe onscreen at once without any of it looking out of place.
No. 4. A rare sequel better than its predecessor, with Stryker as a sharper villain than Magneto and a mutants-vs-humanity theme that lands harder than the first film's.
No. 5. The only pick on Sean's list that plays as a genuine ending, a story willing to let go of the character.
Charles's Top Five Comic Book Movie SequelsBest to worst
No. 1. Shared with Sean.
No. 2. Charles's favorite MCU entry, one he recommends to people as a standalone spy thriller with zero other Marvel homework required.
No. 3. The Jack Kirby energy Charles has wanted from a Marvel movie for years, delivered via Taika Waititi.
No. 4, tied with 'X2.' Half of Charles's favorite superhero-sequel double feature, the genre 'perfected' by actors who'd grown into their roles.
No. 4, tied with 'Spider-Man 2.' The other half of the double feature; expands Wolverine and grounds the mutants-vs-humanity theme through Stryker.
No. 5. Made Charles cry in the theater, 'a perfect, perfect comic book movie' where every character shares the screen without looking out of place.
Van's Top Five Comic Book Movie SequelsBest to worst. Van's No. 4 pick got lost in the crosstalk and never made it onto tape.
No. 1. Van's case: a bigger superhero sequel than 'The Dark Knight' because it expanded Captain America as a character and reshaped the MCU, introducing the Russo brothers and killing off S.H.I.E.L.D., even though he agrees 'Dark Knight' is the better movie.
No. 2. Van's knock: a great psychological thriller with a man in a bat costume in it, not really a superhero movie.
No. 3. The theater experience clinches it: 'the arclight was rocking' the night he saw it.
No. 5. A pick 'from the heart' so Tim Burton's Batman run isn't left out; Van credits it as the template for the modern superhero sequel.
In conversation
Devised by Tom Hardy, who brought Serkis in after working with him on performance capture; written by Hardy's close friend Kelly Marcel. Serkis built distinct physicalities for Venom (heavyweight, 'a gorilla crossed with a killer whale') and Carnage (serpentine, developed with dancers and parkour artists), shot by Bob Richardson in a fuller frame than the first film, chasing an '80s thriller look with a dash of gothic romance.
Serkis's answer to the show's closing 'last great thing you've seen' question: Ali Abbasi's genre-bending Swedish film, written by the author of 'Let the Right One In.' He calls it unpredictable, 'beautiful and terrifying.'
Also mentioned raised along the way
Andy Serkis touchstones BreatheNatural Born KillersBen-HurThe GeneralBeverly Hills CopCape Fear
X-Men, also discussed X-MenX-Men: Days of Future PastX-Men: ApocalypseDark PhoenixSuperman II
The 'one has to go' bit The MatrixThe Empire Strikes Back
The they-don't-make-them-like-this-anymore tangent Tango & CashBasic InstinctRush Hour
In passing Birth of a NationGone with the WindStar Wars: The Last JediEternalsThree Days of the Condor
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV VeepWandaVisionMoon Knight
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