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Ever since Venom first hit the scene, fans recoiled in flirtatious horror as they witnessed the symbiote monster nosh bad guys with his freakishly long tongue and hulking tar-like body. That perturbed attraction quickly turned to Tumblr-era shipping between Venom and his passenger princess, Eddie Brock, as the two continued their budding bromance in its sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, all the way to its newly released curtain call, Venom: The Last Dance. It is also a film that sees old what’s-her-name (Eddie’s former fiancée, Anne) completely pushed out of the love triangle. Now, writer-director Kelly Marcel has come forward to explain why the series bookended itself canonizing Eddie and Venom as the film trilogy’s one true pairing.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Marcel revealed the reason Anne (played by five-time Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams) is absent in Venom: The Last Dance is because she wanted to give fans what they wanted: more of Tom Hardy’s Eddie and Venom.
“We do listen to the fans. After each movie, we go back and we look at what people liked and what people didn’t like. And it was very, very clear that people were very wedded to the relationship between Venom and Eddie. That was what they loved,” Marcel told THR. “The axis on which these movies spin is Venom and Eddie’s relationship, and it’s always been about them.”
As THR notes, the end of 2018’s Venom saw the late Stan Lee act as a wingman of sorts, imparting sage wisdom to Eddie to not give up on his relationship with Anne. Apparently Lee doesn’t know what he’s yapping about because ever since that eyebrow-raising moonlit kiss between Eddie and Anne covered in Venom’s symbiote stuff, Anne went from romantic interest to a supportive third party during the odd couple’s rough patch in Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Marcel went on to describe why Eddie and Venom on the run from the military and symbiote creator Knull for their unholy union made perfect sense as the final storyline for the pair.
“Yeah, we really wanted to isolate them. We wanted to take them away from their comfort zone. We wanted to take them away from everything they knew and everyone they loved, so that they really only had each other to rely on now,” Marcel said. “We knew that we wanted them to reach symbiosis with each other and decide that they were going to be the Lethal Protector, and that they were going to go on this journey together.”
She continued: “And, of course, that quickly becomes very dangerous for them, because the very act of them being together means that the world is at risk. So they come to understand that the thing that they have chosen is actually their downfall, and so all of the characters from the previous movies— other than Peggy Lu’s Mrs. Chen—didn’t belong in this road trip story.”
It’s not every day that an Academy Award nominated actor gets upstaged by a CGI alien, but love works in mysterious ways.
Venom: The Last Dance is now playing in theaters.
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