Despite some bad buzz and lousy reviews, Ruben Fleischer’s Venom exceeded all expectations at the box office, and now that the movie is out on home release, we can get an even better idea of what to expect from the film’s recently confirmed sequel.
Of course, for anyone who’s seen the post-credits of Eddie Brock’s standalone debut, Cletus Kasady has already spelled out the content of Venom 2 quite clearly: “There’s gonna be Carnage.” But if you want to know a little more about the man who’ll be bringing this carnage, the extended post-credits sequence, found as a special feature on digital services, lets Woody Harrelson show us more of his psychotic side.
The scene begins in much the way that people saw in cinemas, with Eddie paying Cletus a visit in prison, and Harrelson’s character insisting that he can turn on “the whole creepy serial killer thing” if he wants. But after Cletus delivers his line about the “Dadaist patterns of arterial spray,” the extended version starts to diverge, as the future Carnage goes further down the rabbit hole in his twisted imagery.
“I could talk about sucking out their eyeballs,” Cletus says. “Mmm. Crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside. Eddie, it’s hard to see you in that light. Why don’t you…come on over. I know they told you to mind your distance, but I’ll be a good boy. Honest.”
After that, the killer agrees to tell Eddie where his other victims are, but only if he hands him his pen and paper so Cletus can write it down. Sensing an obvious trick, Eddie declines, prompting Cletus to respond:
“Hey, you want to be the first to get the scoop, right? If you’re too chicken…the deal’s off. No bodies. No closure for those poor families. No interview of a lifetime for you… When I get out of here, and I will…there’s gonna be carnage.”
All in all, the extended version gives Harrelson more of a chance to flesh out the mannerisms and mindset of Venom’s next foe, and if a report from a few weeks ago is anything to go by, then we could be seeing the character in full Carnage mode as soon as October 2020. Just don’t expect him to do anything as gory as sucking out eyeballs on camera, since the producers have already suggested that Venom 2 will be another PG-13 affair.