SPOILER WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, now in theaters.

Venom has returned to the silver screen for Let There Be Carnage -- and he brought company. In the sequel to Sony's 2018 film, Eddie Brock has just begun to settle into his new life with his symbiote partner Venom, when serial killer Cletus Kasady barges into his life. After Eddie's journalistic tête-à-têtes with Cletus bring Cletus back to death row, Cletus lashes out and gets a taste of Eddie's alien blood, allowing him to transform into the bloodthirsty entity known as Carnage. Fortunately, industry veteran Andy Serkis was on hand to direct the Marvel monster fest, and he couldn't have been happier to bring this dark, but heartfelt story to life.

Speaking to CBR, Serkis broke down just what makes Venom: Let There Be Carnage so special to him. He explained how he found the heart of the film in the relationships between all the characters and why the villains' "brutalized pasts" ground them for the audience. He compared the film to a thriller with its brief, intense runtime and expressed his willingness to return for another film in the franchise, while teasing that he may have a few ideas of his own to contribute to the story. He also unpacked that Marvel Cinematic Universe mid-credits scene, revealed why he believe Snoke has more stories to tell in the Star Wars universe and more.

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CBR: What excited you the most about playing with Venom and his world?

Andy Serkis: I think it would have to be, hands down, working with the exceptional cast, headed by Tom Hardy, mostly. In fact, it was Tom that reached out to me originally. So we've been wanting to work together for many, many years, and I've always admired him hugely. There have been other projects in the past that we've talked about, but this -- this, when it came about, just seemed to be the perfect blend of both our sensibilities and the sorts of characters that we like to play: kind of out-there, quite physical, vocally challenging. So, you know, there were so many crossovers, so it was a no-brainer when he approached me.

One of my favorite stories about the first Venom film was how Tom Hardy ended up in the lobster tank in that well-to-do restaurant, and how it was a pretty spur-of-the-moment decision that required additional work, but became one of the film's most memorable scenes. All this to say: what, in your opinion, was your lobster tank moment in Let There Be Carnage?

[laughs] My lobster tank moment! I think the one of the scenes that kind of grew out of what was originally on the page, something quite small, I think, is basically the apartment fight. So the apartment fight, when they've reached this kind of cataclysmic moment where they no longer can bear each other's company and they end up really having a go at each other. It starts off with a very personal attack on Venom, and then escalates and escalates. That was literally just going to be a row, and then maybe a bit of a slap from Venom, but it ended up being this whole thing. I think that, sort of tonally, goes some close place to being the madness of their relationship. It was a lobster tank moment, if you like.

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Tom is obviously very invested in this character and his stories. What was something he contributed to the sequel film that surprised you?

Surprised me? Well, he was constantly surprising me, every single day. He's so inventive. His process of creating the voice for Venom is a marvel to watch, because he records every single line before the scene and then plays it back in an earbud in his ear. So it gives him enormous freedom to -- this is a process that he evolved in the first movie, but just seeing the freedom with which he's able to then change up the dialogue, and then go back in for another take, and then bounce off him in a different way.

You know, if you're doing a duologue scene with two actors, there's a sort of unspoken politeness where you allow the other person to stop speaking before you jump in. [laughs] But he doesn't have to do that with Venom, because he's in his ear! So they can banter over each other, and it adds to the reality. So it really makes it feel like a true conversation between a human being and an alien.

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The thing that has struck me about both Venom films is that there is some incredible darkness in this world, that's often punctuated by moments of humor. How did you set out to balance those tones in Let There Be Carnage, and how did you find the film's heart?

That's a great question. I mean, it all starts, really, and ends with real relationships... and rooting for every single character. We didn't want to create a film that was sort of out of balance, and it was just purely comedic. You could have done a version of that film, but then you lack the real heart of the movie, as you say.

So you start off with, "What are the real stakes? What's the truth of it? What are the real situations?" and you build out from there. Once you've built that landscape, and it feels psychologically and emotionally real, then you can go wherever you like! You can even have Buster Keaton slapstick humor, you can have physical comedy, and then the quickfire, rapid banter -- you can have all of that stuff, but you need that solid relationship between Eddie and Venom and what that really means at the core.

There are multiple love stories in this movie: Eddie's loss of Anne Weyling, Venom's loss of Anne Weyling, then you've got obviously Frances Barrison's -- otherwise known as Shriek -- relationship with Cletus Kasady. There are so many poignant and really emotionally truthful beats in the film, and darkness, as you say.

One moment, we're in an execution chamber, about to see someone die by lethal injection, and then suddenly we see this kind of Frankensteinian birth of a creature. I just love the tonally, as you say, kind of jumping around between all of those different worlds and finding the skill to try and blend them all so that they feel coherent.

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You've played some incredibly iconic villains, from Gollum to Snoke to Klaue. How did your past experiences in this arena contribute to the way you approached Carnage and Shriek?

For a start, you've got one of the most brilliant actors on the planet playing Cletus Kasady. What Woody [Harrelson] was able to bring to the table, and then Naomie Harris, who is just really incredible as Frances Barrison and has that darkness. I mean, they both share a really brutalized past as characters.

But again, with Cletus -- there's a version of Cletus, which there was quite a lot of humor written into the role, but you don't want to get to the point where you're commenting at all with the humor. So Cletus has got to be this magical infusion of real darkness, vulnerability, which Woody plays at times in a kind of real twisted malevolence and viciousness, which he plays at times. He surfs between all of these different aspects of Cletus' character seamlessly, and then he can be funny too!

So at heart, the relationship -- and that's what I mean about tonally -- we wanted to make that feel [like] a really beautiful, loving relationship. They cannot live without each other and they hold a torch for each other all during the years of separation. So it's Naomie playing the darkness and the truth of that, because Shriek as a character, Frances Barrison, she also had a brutalized upbringing, which is what her point of connection is with Cletus.

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I have to know: Is Shriek dead? In your opinion, was this definitely, without a doubt, the end for her?

Well, as you and I well know, in movies, you're never dead, really, until someone screams -- which is ironic, in her case! [laughs] But anyway, no, I think -- look, depending on what happens in the future, depending on the appetite for the movies, etc, etc, etc, I think there's probably a way -- there is a version where you could quite easily have her not be killed, if we wanted to go that route. [laughs]

Tom Hardy in Venom: Let There Be Carnage

There are a few scenes in the film that really stood out to me, the first being the postcard scene, where we get a blend of Tim Burtonesque animation while Eddie reads the letter and Cletus writes it. How did that come together on your end, and why was it important to express that piece of Cletus' story through art?

We had it in the script that we would suddenly go into comic book panels to show the back history of Cletus' life and really just trying to understand a little bit of how and why he has become who he is, but going to comic book panels felt like the wrong route.

We'd already established that Cletus has this feverish kind of methodology of drawing out his pain, literally sketching it out on the walls of the cells, and that it's a form of exorcism for him. So I was very keen to try and have all of the information that was contained in his backstory come out of his artistic expression and tying it in with his message to Eddie Brock. So that was an area where I felt it was important -- we couldn't be on the outside looking in at a load of comic book panels to explain that. It had to come from from inside his head.

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The other scene takes place in the church while the bell is tolling and Eddie and Cletus are shifting in and out of their symbiote forms. How did your background in motion capture help you prepare for those extensive CGI fight sequences between Venom and Carnage?

Well, as much as I would like to say we did use ball capture, we didn't in this movie. Because of the transformational nature between the two, we just thought we'd start with animation. We did these a little bit of motion capture to actually build the physicality of Carnage and his different ways of moving, in a sort of testing phase, a bit of a mental phase, but we didn't actually do physical capture during this.

It was just the setup would have been too complex and time consuming for the days that we had to shoot this, which it was a very, very quick shoot. I mean, it was 54 days to shoot this entire movie, which is pretty incredible for a movie this scale. But I certainly understand, you know, obviously, the nature of creating an environment for the actors... and to have things for them to react to and respond to. I was able to draw the path through all of those moments for them and help them to realize them as they were playing them.

In a world where we have films like Avengers: Endgame, which ran for nearly three hours, why did you aim for such a short runtime? It felt quite brief!

Yeah, I mean, it's true. The thing is, we all felt -- Tom, Kelly [Marcel], myself, everybody, really -- that this needed to be lean, fast-paced, like a thrill ride, really. We wanted to get to the point where Carnage was coming into the story quickly, but without rushing the important character beats -- not necessarily feeling that we had to linger.

So we all knew that we wanted the pace to almost be breathless, in a way, and to lead us and that events were charging on ahead of us, that Eddie was trying to catch up with Carnage, and Mulligan is trying to catch [up]. In the same way, I suppose, once Cape Fear gets going, that the events happen very thick and fast. From the thriller point of view, I think we wanted to keep it moving -- and also, it works well for the humor, too.

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It'd be remiss if I did not bring up Venom's final moment with Cletus, where Venom gets the infamous only F-bomb in a PG-13 movie, which made me absolutely cackle with delight. Tell me a little about that scene and why, in your opinion, that was the right F-bomb moment.

I love that final scene between Cletus and Eddie, where they've had the big battle royale and now it's down to two guys, in a sense, although Eddie is still Venom half-face. But Cletus saying, "I'm still a killer with or without the monster" and it's raining and it's very intimate and personal and is about their relationship and how they connect, and it's quite heartfelt. It just seemed perfect, that at the end of all of that, we undercut it and throw it away and have at it with the F-bomb. It just seems to be the perfect place for it, really.

Carnage vs security guard

Should Venom's story continue into a third film, would you be willing to return for that in some capacity? Where would you like to take his story?

Wow, that's a really amazing question. I'm not sure I can answer all of that, but I can tell you that I had such a great time making this that... if it works out that way and there is another one, of course! It'd be amazing to work on another one. I know that Tom and Kelly have had discussions about potentially -- they were obviously thinking about a trilogy arc, I guess, way back. So we'll have to see! We'll just have to see what happens. But yeah, I mean, I have a few ideas of my own, but I certainly wouldn't be bold enough to put them out there right now. [laughs]

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We need to talk about that post-credits scene, which brings Venom into the MCU proper. At what point in the process did you realize you'd kind of backed into the MCU again, and what was your initial reaction to that?

Look, there'd been talk of it, of course, for the entire -- you know, even I came on board, and during and then all the way through the shoot. It was like, "Are we gonna...? Is it...? How are we going to do this?" There were versions where it got closer earlier, actually, but this little sort of teaser moment is where we ended up. Why? Because it leaves things open. It doesn't mean necessarily that the portal is -- you know, why we don't need for it to be the next thing that happens. It could -- you know, we just wanted to leave it ambiguous, but at the same time, let everybody know that there is a possibility.

After that mid-credits scene, it truly feels like anything is possible in this world, in the MCU and in film in general. That being said, which nerdy character you've played would you most like revisit, and why?

I'd quite like to revisit Snoke, in a way, because I feel like he was kind of cut off in his prime, quite frankly. When I first read Rian [Johnson]'s scripts, I was like excited! [laughs] I finished page 25, 26, it's all going well; it's just like, "Oh my gosh, this is gonna be a fantastic, fantastic character," and then, page 45, it's just like, "And then Rey comes into the room, and -- oh! You get cut in half!" I'm like, "What?!" I was devastated! I mean, obviously, it worked dramatically well in the movie, but I think there's a lot to unpack with Snoke... Caesar, Klaue and Snoke all died in one year. It was not a good year!

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As you well know, science fiction and fantasy are really enjoying a moment in the cultural spotlight. What do you think it is about sci-fi and fantasy that has pushed it into the cultural zeitgeist for the past 20 or so years? What are stories like Venom: Let There Be Carnage able to do, that perhaps a straight drama couldn't?

It's very interesting, isn't it? We're obviously going through a phase of really looking at ourselves and saying, "What are our belief systems?" There have been so many solid belief systems and story that have driven our progression as a species that haven't really moved forward. Then everything's sort of been blown apart, mainly with the birth of the Internet.

The way that the world is changing -- these are our modern mythological stories, obviously. They are the stories of our time, because they're able to bring us together. As metaphors, we're able to talk about real issues. But they also, like all great stories, are couched in a fable, so that we can stomach them and digest them at a young age. They're a safe environment for exploring incredibly important social issues: issues about the environment, semi-religious issues -- I think they really are very potent at the moment because of this seismic shift in what we believed or perceived to be truth.

Directed by Andy Serkis, Venom: Let There be Carnage is now in theaters.

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