The Venom franchise is returning to the big screen, and its bringing all of the action and necessary plot to match.

In Sony’s Marvel Universe film, “Eddie (Tom Hrady) and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo is forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance,” per the official description.

On balancing both good and evil

“I play Dr. Teddy Payne and she’s a scientist,” Juno Temple told Blavity’s Shadow and Act ahead of the film’s premiere. “She’s a scientist that specializes in alien life forms and things from the great beyond. And it’s something that she’s deeply passionate about from things that she went through as a little girl. So, for me, I think she would probably lean towards getting to know, or she would like to get to know Venom more.”

She added, “I also think she is somebody who is really interested in the connection between the two of them, a symbiote and a human joining together, and the fact that this specific duo has paired so perfectly. As [the] audience, you watch it and it’s almost like they are Ying and Yang, and I think that’s something, as an audience member, I have loved from the original movie. Then getting to be a person who’s observing that in a very top secret, like nobody knows where it is space, and then getting to actually interact with it in person, is something that I think is more than exciting to her. It’s almost like she can’t contain herself.”

Her co-star and seemingly the archnemesis of Dr. Payne’s character, Chiwetel Ejiofor, echoes a similar sentiment for his role as Rex Strickland.

“The film plays with this idea of villains and heroes in a really interesting way, and I think that all of the characters hold this sort of duality,” Ejiofor told us. “One of the things about Rex is that he does think of Dr. Payne as a bit of a villain. He does think that her rationale is dangerous and that she’s dogmatic, over-focused, and in certain areas, a bit extreme.”

“There’s this sense that becomes something that he thinks is destabilizing,” he continued. “I think in story terms, you can look at somebody who’s like the general and you would think that he would be the kind of zealot of it all and hold the kind of military line. He does, to some degree, but he also has all this empathy and he’s passionate about the team that he’s working with. He’s worried for them, and he’s motivated by that empathy to do some of the things that he does as well as protecting the world. Then, obviously, you have that duality with Venom and Eddie and Eddie does things in the film that are questionable. He goes through things that he feels very guilty about and has to kind of work through. The film plays with that tension… the duality of all of us, in a really interesting way.”

The film, in theaters now, also stars Rhys Ifans, Peggy Lu, Alanna Ubach and Stephen Graham. Kelly Marcel directed it from a screenplay she wrote, based on a story by her and Hardy.

Juno Temple

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