Watch Venom‘s Director Break Down a Fight Scene

Venom director Ruben Fleischer joined Vanity Fair to break down one of the film’s gooey, gruesome fight sequences. In this particular scene, we see Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), now sharing his body and mind with the symbiote Venom, take on a team of Life Foundation soldiers, the henchmen of the film’s villain Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed). Fleischer gives us some intriguing insight into how this propulsive scene was created, which included a combination of practical and visual effects (for more on the film’s CGI, check out our interview with VFX supervisor and concept artist here.)

Venom might be one of the trickiest characters in Marvel’s canon to create a fight sequence for, considering a big part of his power comes from his ability to shoot tendrils and tentacles of that black symbiote goo out of his body to power slam anyone dumb enough to take him on. This created a balancing act for Fleischer’s team, which needed to combine and practical effects and stunt work in real time with the painstaking work of visual effects artists in post to create a seamlessly brutal fight sequence. What’s more, in this particular scene, Eddie is discovering his new powers in the midst of using them; consider it the darker version of when Spider-Man inevitably goes web-slinging for the first time, only here, Eddie’s webs are essentially his entire body, and their purpose is to destroy any people in his path.

The scene goes from a frazzled Eddie burning his hand on a plate of tater tots (Venom loves tots, for some reason) after his deeply unsettling introduction to the symbiote at Carlton Drake’s lab to his discovering, in the most alarming way possible, just how much trouble he’s in now that he’s come into contact with the alien goo. Eddie’s now hearing unfamiliar voices in his head, and suddenly he’s got four mercenaries in his apartment, and they’re not there to offer home decorating advice. This is when the scene becomes something of a puppeteering set-piece, with Venom controlling Eddie and keeping him alive by taking out Drake’s goons.

Venom was a smash hit this weekend, breaking the record for October openings set back by Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity in 2013. This below scene gives you a good sense of what drew all those people into theaters.

Featured image: An image from ‘Venom.’ Courtesy Sony Pictures.