Venom's Director Breaks Down a Fight Scene

Hi, I'm Ruben Fleischer.

I'm the director of Venom

and this is Notes On A Scene from Venom.

(intense music) (men grunting)

So we have Eddie's apartment scene

where Eddie and Venom first cross paths

where for the very first time

he gets to see the tendrils come out of his body.

So this is both a fight scene

and a character moment for Eddie

where we try to play discovery

as a part of a fight sequence.

So to distinguish it from just a typical beat up guys,

Eddie is reacting to everything

as if it's happening for the first time for him.

Cause it is happening for the first time.

(bell dings)

The scene starts with tater tots

which are kind of a runner throughout the movie.

Venom for whatever reason has a real taste for tater tots.

[Venom] Do not open that door.

As soon as I got the opportunity

to direct the movie Venom,

there was only one person I thought of

to play both Eddie Brock and Venom

and that was Tom Hardy.

Just this, like, dark menacing character

but he also brings a lot of comedy and fun to the role

where he's reacting things as if they're happening to him

and there's even, at times,

it's as if he's being puppeteered by Venom

which is what we're about to get into.

Eddie's hearing voices that are unfamiliar

and then a knock at the door comes.

(man grunting)

And who should appear but four tough mercs.

So that's Roland Treece who's the head of security

for the Life Foundation

and he's telling Eddie to put his hands up,

but Venom is having none of it.

He says:

[Venom] What are you doing?

One of the coolest things about this movie

is that Tom Hardy plays both roles.

He's not only Eddie Brock but he's also the voice of Venom.

[Venom] You are making us look bad.

I, no, I am not!

At the beginning of each day,

Tom Hardy would record the whole scene,

both Eddie and Venom's voices,

and then we would cut out Eddie's part

and then the sound guys would trigger Venom's voice

when the scene called for it.

[Venom] Do not open that door.

He's actually got a little earwig,

so as he is performing the scene

Venom's actually talking to him in the midst of the scene

and that's his own voice

which is pretty cool to watch.

And technically, just as an actor,

very very challenging and sophisticated.

I'm putting my hands up.

[Venom] You are making us look bad.

I, no, I am not!

[Venom] Yes, you are!

No, I'm not.

This is the battle for control of Eddie's body

where Tom is having to play both parts simultaneously.

It was really fun to watch Tom execute this

but, you know, All of Me is a movie

that most people haven't seen.

[Woman] We obviously have mutual control over our body.

Our body?

This is my body!

But it was a reference point for this movie

where Steve Martin's being puppeteered

by Lily Tomlin and this was actually

sort of a nod to All of Me where his body

is doing things that he has no control over.

Where's the book?

The mercs are having none of it

and they quickly tase him.

Take him down. (Eddie groaning)

(Eddie screaming)

This is the first ever time a part of Venom

extrudes from Tom's body.

But what's so cool about this, in my mind,

is that it's not actually Eddie

that's throwing the guy out the window, it's Venom.

There's a moment of Tom to stop and look

and think, what is this black goo coming out of my hand?

But before he has a second to think about it,

what do you know?

(Man groans)

Venom sends a guy up into the ceiling

and down, down to the ground.

Eddie's trying to submit to these guys

and Venom's, of course, the alpha

and saying no, we will not submit.

We are gonna throw them out of windows

and put them into the ceiling.

The great thing about the Venom movie

is that we have Venom comics to draw from

and throughout the Venom comics,

Venom's goo, as we like to call it as the technical term,

is always coming out of Eddie.

Tom Hardy had to pretend as if there was goo

coming out of his hand and imagine this,

but in this moment we have Eddie

putting out a tendril and this poor guy is on a wire.

He's on two wires, one that's up and one that's down,

but that is all done with the effects

where we paint out the wires

and of course the tendrils aren't really there

but it's just the choreography between the actors.

With wire work and stunts,

we try not to do it too much

cause this guy's literally getting thrown

into the ceiling and the floor

and we don't wanna hurt anyone.

But we probably do it at least 25 or 30 times

just to make sure we get it right.

No, we probably did it like two or three

but this stunt team is so capable

and so talented you usually get it

in the first or second take.

So we got some more tendril action,

guys getting clothes-lined,

but again this is why I love this scene.

I'm so sorry about your friends.

Where he's smashing these left and right,

he's actually apologizing at the same,

well, sorry about your friends

and then he puts him through a table.

And it's about this give and take

between Eddie and Venom.

And this is really Eddie and Venom's first time to meet

and so Eddie doesn't really understand what's happening,

so he smashes poor Treece through the table,

takes a weight, this weight,

both these weights actually are CG

they weren't actually there.

So Tom would just basically pretend

to stick his leg out and then toss it,

which results in this guy actually

getting smashed into a refrigerator

and then this barbel here is totally CG.

These bottles, though, are practical.

These are classic candy glass bottles

that we get to break and smash.

(ominous music) (man grunts)

Another thing I should note about this sequence

which is super important that I'm very proud of

is the score for this scene.

(ominous music) (loud squelching)

Our composer Ludwig Göransson, this is where

we really hear the Venom theme

come full throughout this scene

and it's a really aggressive strong

synthesizer kind of these heavy tones.

Unlike a lot of movies where you're scoring the action,

we're actually scoring the character moment

because this is the real moment

that we first see Venom for the first time

and it's really playing that moment

of Eddie and Venom and Venom's emergence

and Eddie's discovery.

(ominous music) (loud squelching)

We had talked about the goo spreading

between his fingers,

but the way that he performs it

was so cool that we just had to go in

with V-Effects and just make this spaghetti accordion

basically happen between his arms

as he acted it out but we were

cuing from the actor's performance

where he's looking at it as if it's actually there

but of course that black goo isn't there.

That's just the power of Tom Hardy's amazing performance

and then the score really accents the oh my God moment

of I have black goo coming out of my hands,

what is happening to me?

Let me go strangle this guy.

(man yells)

Oh. (intense music)

Most of all of Tom's actions in the movie

were all self-motivated by Tom Hardy

where he would act as if Venom was controlling him

but in this instance--

Shit.

We actually have a wire, this tendril

kind of does a good job of hiding.

We just did a hand pull,

we put a wire on his shoulder

and then some guy off camera

just literally yanks him out of frame.

You can see that from the front and back

as he's flying over and then kick those tater tots

into some mercs' faces.

So from this moment forward,

now the score kicks in and it really becomes

like a proper action scene.

And this is the first act of a very long extended chase.

So we wanna make sure that we didn't

tire the audience out.

(men groaning) Uh uh.

They're both looking at this fist

that's formed like, oh my God, what is that?

Neither of them know what's going on.

Not only Tom, but also this guy, Jeremy,

who was a stunt actor playing opposite

but of course this guy is gonna get socked

in the face by the Venom fist and then thrown into a wall.

We employed wires here which get painted out

but that's real Tom Hardy right there who is very strong.

Strong enough to throw a guy into a wall if he wanted to

but because it's a movie,

there's something called breakaways.

Right here, you can see that these,

this wood is Balsa wood, it's not real wood.

And so Jeremy got thrown into the wall

where the shelf was designed to break.

You know, if he just hit the wall

that'd be satisfying but even better

you can have him hit the wall

and smash into a shelf and break

and have everything on the shelf fall over, too.

So it just makes it a little bit more exciting

with a bunch of stuff on it.

A cup, even.

The other cool thing about this wall

is that it's made out of foam.

So even though it looks like a real brick wall,

this is actually a piece of foam

that's been painted to look like brick.

So we do everything that we can to protect

our actors who work so hard

and for this one we probably did two takes.

I think we only had two shelves,

so that we had to get it right.

(men yelling)

Venom whips a tendril at this poor guy,

this stunt actor's name is Danny AKA Black Panther.

Cause he did the bulk of Chadwick Boseman's stunts.

So here Eddie's got him locked

with his tendril and then there was actually

a line here that didn't make it into the movie

where as Tom punches him, he goes,

balls, sternum, face.

(man groans)

(man grunts)

For this one, I don't think we used a wire.

I think Danny's just kinda helping motivate the jump.

Venom says:

[Venom] Aw, let's bite all the heads off

and pile them up in the corner.

Why would we do that?

[Venom] Pile of bodies, pile of heads.

(loud squelching) (man groans and yells)

This is a great piece of wire work here

but it's also a tribute to Tom's timing

because he had to queue his body

as if it was jerking to send the tendril out again.

We didn't have any real tendrils.

Tom Hardy's not actually possessed by an alien

and this is another wire gag here.

And he really came at it with force,

we had to in post make this wall stable

because otherwise it was just shaking so much

because of the impact.

He really got got, this guy.

As this guy comes in here,

he's wearing a harness and then there's a hole

that's been cut into this door

and then there's a wire that's coming

through the door and there's two guys

behind the door just yanking them

as hard as they can.

Then in post, we take out the wire

and then replace, you can't really see it

in this angle, but the piece of the door

that we had to cut out in order to put the wire through.

(man yells and groans)

He got it pretty hard, this poor guy.

So Eddie makes his way out of the apartment,

his next door neighbor who:

Oh, shit, man.

Audiences will never know, his name's Ziggy.

Not sure what's going on, he's freaking out, dude.

Tries to go down the stairs, he sees one merc.

Jeremy, another guy that got tossed

into the kitchen wall, comes out firing.

There's nowhere to turn so Venom decides

we're going out the window.

This whole apartment was a stage that we built in Atlanta.

Even the staircase, everything is a stage on set.

It's a two story set.

So this is Tom Hardy, running towards this window,

which you can see actually see the distortions

in his face, that's because it's not real glass

that's candy glass which is made out of candy.

And then we cut to the reverse,

where we see his stunt double, Jacob Tomuri,

who's an incredibly talented New Zealander,

jumping out the actual window.

So from the front this is a set wall,

this brick here is all just normal plywood,

but we call facing the outside of the window

just so that we could get this shot.

We had a crane outside the window

so we could get Tom shot running at us

and then the reverse is with the camera

inside pushing after Jacob as he jumps out the window.

And so as he goes out the window,

you actually see how cheap this Balsa wood is

cause it just breaks right off.

Does a good job of protecting his face as he goes through.

And this, this reverse here,

this apartment here is a blue screen.

So after the fact, we went in

and turned the blue screen into a neighboring apartment.

That glass that's falling with him

is actual real practical candy glass

and that's really Jacob, the stunt double,

falling but that I think is Tom Hardy himself

because he also did the wire work

for this gag for all the closeups.

Everything from this side on is all green screen

and replaced with the city

and here on over is green screen

but this is all practical against a set,

so that we could actually get the effect

of Eddie falling out of the apartment.

And he, of course, is on a wire.

He's not free falling there.

Cannot afford to lose Tom Hardy.

Alright, I think that concludes our scene breakdown.

I am grateful for the opportunity

to tell you a little bit about Venom

and I hope you all go check it out in theaters.