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Venom: Let There Be Carnage Goes Full Violent Romcom Mode—And It Works

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Lethal protectors unite! The typical notion that sequels don’t often live up to their successors didn’t affect Sony’s Venom: Let There be Carnage, as the blockbuster managed to rise to the top in a number of ways, from the income to character development.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage had a momentous outing in the weekend box office. It grossed $90.1 million, setting the record for the highest grossing opening weekend in the Pandemic era. Marvel’s Black Widow previously held the top spot, having grossed $80 million during July.

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Let There Be Carnage, directed by Andy Serkis, is the sequel to 2018’s Venom. Eddie Brock/Venom (Tom Hardy) must stop serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) after Kasady obtains his own symbiote, which turns him into the raging, sadistic Carnage.

Along the way, Brock must learn to cohabitate with his alien parasite, all while going through the continued heartbreak of losing his former fiancee Anne Weying (Michelle Williams). Naomie Harris and Reid Scott also star as Frances Barrison/Shriek and Dan Lewis, respectively.

Let There Be Carnage has a runtime of just 90 minutes, which is 50 minutes shorter than Venom. That’s an absolutely absurd number when considering how today’s superhero flicks operate.

That short of a length lead to initial fears about a lack of crucial character development and world-building, along with a rushed story. While the movie wasn’t able to quite achieve some of those factors, they did excel when it came down to the vocal point: Brock and his hen-raising, chocolate-eating black slime.

The incredibly cheesy but heartfelt development between Brock and Venom was the show-stealer of Let There Be Carnage. It was a big risk taking a typically gruesome and horrifying antagonist (or antihero in this case) and turning him into the “hurt girlfriend” of a relationship.

However, the move paid off in a huge way, thanks in part to the “silly” identity this franchise has taken (some of the best jokes come from Venom and Brock’s quips). It captured the real-life aspects and lessons of any couple, having to learn what the other’s needs are in order to make the relationship last, and resulted in a solid payoff towards the end of the film.

Some fans might be disappointed with how Sony adapted Carnage/Kasady, whose character made his cinematic debut. In the comics, Carnage has committed numerous gory atrocities that would leave even the most heinous impressed.

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Despite its major characters’ reputations, Sony again went with PG-13 as opposed to an R rating. Serkis did express the movie’s goal of “pushing the limits” of the PG-13 rating.

To Serkis’ credit, the movie did take creative ways of showing just how brutal Kasady and his parasite counterpart could be. However, Let There Be Carnage‘s awkward placing between PG-13 and R reflects the movie’s overall tone to a T: a mix of dark, grim violence and funny light-heartedness that was still trying to find its footing at times.

While the heart and soul of Let There Be Carnage prevails, the film does have noticeable downfalls that hold it back. The action, while enjoyable, did turn too predictable and mindless at times, and the film lost a good amount of its steam towards the final act- complete with Carnage literally yelling “let there be Carnage!” which resulted in a million eyeballs rolling to the back of heads.

Regardless of the bumps, the film managed to achieve the fast-paced, action-packed ride they desired while continuing to build up the characters of Brock and Venom. It’s a fun watch, and you’ll be rewarded greatly for your time at the end of the movie (if you’re curious and don’t care about spoilers, read on).

Major Spoilers Ahead!

The mid-credits scene of Venom: Let There Be Carnage leaves us wondering: where do Sony and Venom go from here?

Enjoying their fugitive status in a tropical paradise, Venom and Brock are relaxing on a bed watching television, when Venom starts telling Brock of the symbiotes’ awareness of other universes.

Then, a blinding light suddenly occurs, and the pair find themselves watching J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) as he reveals Spider-Man’s (Tom Holland) identity, which is right where Spider-Man: Far From Home left off.

It all but assures Venom and Spider-Man will be meeting on the big screen for the first time since Spider-Man 3. But when will it happen? Spider-Man: No Way Home, set to release in December, will be dealing heavily with the multiverse. It seems very likely that Venom could now make an appearance, if only just a minor cameo.

However, this mid-credits scene could be also be seen as Sony setting the groundwork to bring Holland’s Spider-Man back into their own cinematic universe. Sony and Marvel Studio’s licensing agreement has been unpredictable in the past, with the two major companies almost ending the deal in 2019.

For now, fans can look forward to the endless possibilities that could arise thanks to the web-slinger and his fearsome foe finally sharing the same timeline.

Snake

Lab-Grown Venom Works As New Treatment For Snake Bites

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Every 5 minutes, 50 people are bitten by a venomous snake, and every day at least 200 people die from the bite. The main way to treat a snake bite is with antivenom; which is made by milking snake venom by hand and directly injecting it into a horse. The horse’s immune system will respond to the small doses of venom and evoke a response that produces antibodies that fight the poisonous effects of the venom. The horse’s blood is drawn and purified to collect the antibodies, this process can also be done within other large animals as well, however, it’s quite dangerous for all parties involved. 

The process of creating antivenom is messy, error prone, and extremely labor intensive, and if you’re not paying attention and doing everything 100% correctly, it can result in serious side effects for the snake, bitten human, the horse, and the individual performing the whole process. Antivenom production has been the same since the Victorian era and, up until now, it was the best way to treat severe snake bites. However, scientists have finally made major strides in producing snake venom in a lab environment using stem cells and genome mapping.

“[We] have created venom-producing glands from the Cape Coral Snake and eight other snake species in the lab, using stem cells. The toxins produced by the miniature 3-D replicas of snake glands are all but identical to the snake’s venom. These are massive developments because it’s bringing 2020 science into a field that’s been neglected,” said Nick Cammack, head of the snakebite team at UK medical research charity Wellcome.

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Hans Clevers has been the principal investigator at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research in the Netherlands in regard to creating a new antivenom, however, Clevers wasn’t even intending on tackling this issue originally. In 2009, Clevers and his team developed a technique to make miniature human organs out of stem cells called organoids. This made medical history at the time, as doctors were given the ability to test the specific effects of certain drugs safely outside of a patient’s body, but still using their specific DNA to know how they would react; these techniques really advanced certain cancer treatments as well. 

At the time, Clevers was teaching as well as creating these organoids, and when three of his PhD students asked about the logistics of what else stem cells could recreate, they all began brainstorming about different animal organs to make in a lab setting. Eventually, they all agreed that recreating a snakes venom glands would be the coolest development they could make, and although they all had low standards on their ability to do so, the lack of research, at the time, regarding stem cells and snake venom was enough inspiration to at least try. 

“[We] found we were able to take a tiny chunk of snake tissue, containing stem cells, and nurture it in a dish with the same growth factor we used for human organoids to create the venom glands. These snake organoids produced the same toxins as the snake venom. Open them up and you have a lot of venom. As far as we can tell, it’s identical. We’ve compared it directly to the venom from the same species of snake and we find the exact same components,” said Clevers, who posted about these findings in the Journal Cell.

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Once developed, Clevers and his team took their stem cell venom and some real venom that was extracted from the same snake that their lab-made venom emulated and compared how human muscle cells reacted to both on a genetic level. They found that the muscle cells had the same exact reaction to both, meaning they successfully created an “artificial” version of the venom that, genetically, is identical to the real thing. 

This is a huge development, as previously mentioned, current antivenom practices that involve horses has been the main method of treating snake bites since the Victorian era, so Clevers and all the other teams in Europe currently working on this are advancing science more than they know. Only 60% of the world’s venomous snake populations have successful antivenom treatments in the case of a bite. The goal is to begin developing snake organoids from the 600+ venomous snake species currently living on our planet. If successful, the mass production and distribution of these new treatments could have hundreds of thousands of lives every year. 

“The next step is to take all that knowledge and start investigating new antivenoms that take a more molecular approach. The lab now plans to make venom gland organoids from the world’s 50 most venomous animals and we will share this biobank with researchers worldwide. At the moment, we’re able to produce the organoids at a rate of one a week,” Clevers said.