Andy Serkis has made headlines following some pretty controversial comments surrounding his upcoming Marvel film, Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
Uproxx recently released an interview with Andy Serkis, the director of the second installment of Marvel’s Venom series. In the interview, Serkis shone a light on the nature of the protagonist’s relationship with the alien symbiote who inhabits his body.
During the interview, Serkis was asked about a specific scene within the sequel in which Venom (Tom Hardy) gives a heartfelt speech that seems to heavily reference LGBTQIA topics.
As he described the production backstory of the scene, Serkis stated, “It was originally going to be a carnival of the damned and it ended up being Tom had got to know Little Simz, who’s a brilliant rapper and also stars in the movie." He continued, "And she actually had made a song, unbeknownst to her, called 'Venom' that connected very much with the first movie. And so Tom got in touch with her and that song became sort of the focus.”
He added, “Well, Tom and [co-writer] Kelly [Marcel] were always about Venom coming out and going to a party that was a very sort of an LGBTQIA kind of festival, really, I’d call it, and so this is his coming out party basically. This is Venom’s coming-out party.”
As the interviewer continued debriefing Serkis about what he had intended to put across with the scene, Serkis was asked about his wording of “coming out” and its high connotations to the LGBTQIA community.
Serkis explained how the concept related to not only the scene but also the film as a whole as he stated, “Well, what is interesting is that it’s just like, here he is kind of, he says in the movie, ‘We must stop this cruel treatment of aliens.’ He said, ‘You know, we all live on this ball of rock,’ you know? And so he inadvertently becomes a kind of… he’s speaking for the other. He’s speaking for freedom of the other.”
Serkis then rounded off the interview by labeling the relationship between Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom as the film’s “central love affair.”
Following the interview, fans of the franchise took to Twitter to express their opposing opinions to Serkis’ romantic claims. Many rejected the notion that Brock and Venom’s relationship had been anything beyond platonic, as they claimed the romance concept to be “disgusting.”
One fan wrote, “He’s really trying to sound open but it simply sounds ridiculous. Not how it works whatsoever.”
Others highlighted how, despite the romantic storyline being canon within the Venom comic books, they would not accept it into the film franchise. They shuddered at the thought of a sex scene between Brock and “alien goo" Venom.