Venom brought Cletus Kasady to the big screen for the first time, but it's Venom: Let There Be Carnage that sees the villain undergo his monstrous transformation. The response to Woody Harrelson's take on the character has been overwhelmingly positive, and to call Carnage an absolute beast of a character would be an understatement (that's evident from the movie's trailers).
We spoke to director Andy Serkis ahead of the movie's release exclusively at UK cinemas from October 15, and we had to kick things off by asking the filmmaker about his comic book inspiration. While he didn't name specific issues, it sounds like the source material was key in bringing Carnage to life.
"We trawled through so many of them, mainly as a source of inspiration for Carnage actually [because] that was going to be the newly introduced comic book character. I just gathered everything I could about Carnage from the way he moves to how he changes himself and transforms, becomes mist, and changes the molecular structure of himself."
"Also, how he differs as a symbiote to Venom being the son of Venom, but then plus, plus, plus because he’s a 'red one.' That was a really enjoyable part of the process and then turning that into a real, physical thing using performance capture...having the comics there was amazing for reference."
Later in the interview (which you can watch below), we asked Serkis whether there were any of Carnage's appendages that didn't make the final cut. "[Laughs] There was a line in the script once which was, ‘I can do this! I can do this! I can do this!’ and it was just…that really spurred in our minds, both myself and the visual effects team, endless permutations of weaponizing him."
"We were again spoiled for choice, but you don’t want to show, you want to exemplify exactly what they can all do," the director explained. "I think we got the balance right, but it is really exciting. It was a very exciting part of the process with honing in on what his special sauce was, so to speak."
As we noted in our review, "seeing Venom and Carnage clash is a comic book fan’s dream come true," and Serkis deserves a lot of credit for that. In the video below, he talks more about the technical aspects of creating the character (and that animated origin story), so make sure to check it out.