In Venom, Tom Hardy will play two different characters, the title character as well as the human Eddie Brock who hosts the creature. While Hardy may have been doing double duty, he says he actually took inspiration from three very different, and quite odd, sources, UFC fighter Conor McGregor, rapper Redman, and...Woody Allen? Hardy explains what he took from each like this...
Woody Allen's tortured neurosis and all the humor that can come from that....Conor McGregor---the überviolence but not all the talking. And [rapper] Redman, out of control, living rent-free in his head.
Needless to say, these are three wildly different sources of inspiration, but when Tom Hardy explains things to Esquire, it begins to make some sense where they all came from. Conor McGregor is certainly an easy connection to make. The man is super aggressive in the octagon and he's relentless. The same can certainly be said for Venom, as the alien symbiote is driven by violence, mostly for its own sake.
The other two influences, however, are a bit more bizarre. Eddie Brock is surely going to be a little neurotic considering that, not only does he have a voice in his head that talks to him, but that voice is an actual alien. However, drawing that connection to Woody Allen is likely one that most of us would not make. It does reveal, it would seem, that there is apparently a lighter side to Venom. Most of what we've seen in the trailers has been dark and violent and serious but Hardy implies that some of Eddie fighting the voice in his head is actually funny.
Finally, we have Redman, a rapper known for, as Hardy puts it so eloquently, "living rent-free in his head." The man can seem a little wild an out of sorts on occasion. I suppose to a certain extent Venom himself will be what's living inside Eddie Brock's head, but clearly, when Venom decides to cut loose and just go crazy, he'll do so with Conor McGregor levels of violence.
I think it's safe to say that Tom Hardy will be playing Venom unlike anybody else would or probably could. Nobody else who would have thought to put these characters together in this way. Hardy clearly knows he had an unusual way of looking at the character(s). He admits that he didn't tell anybody who he was using as inspiration because he knew how it would sound.
Will any of this actually work? We'll have to wait until October to find out. Tom Hardy is unquestionably a great actor, so I'm going to assume Hardy knew what he was doing and this is all going to work out, at least until I see the film.
