Spoilers for Venom if you haven’t already seen it!
If you’re reading this, odds are you know which scene I’m talking about when I say “the lobster scene”. If you don’t know what scene I’m talking about and are reading this article without having seen Venom, stop it! Go see it!
The lobster scene was the peak of Eddie’s psychological breakdown after bonding with Venom, Tom Hardy pulls out all the stops to look as frantically baffled and rabidly hungry as he possibly can.
All of the amazing acting that Hardy does aside, a key moment in the scene-when Eddie sits in a tank full of live lobsters to cool off and then eats a whole lobster, shell and all- was completely improvised by Hardy and I’m impressed.
According to an interview with the director Ruben Fleischer (the director of Venom), the set designer originally intended for the tank to simply elevate the restaurant and make it feel more upscale. However, once Hardy walked on set, he said, “well, I must go in that [if] there’s going to be a giant lobster tank. Of course I’m going in it!” and the hilarity was born. The crew loved the idea so much that there was an immediate call to reset the tank so it was filled with dummy lobsters (real ones would have been a little bit more dangerous obviously) and the vegetarian Hardy was given a chocolate and marshmallow replica of one of the lobsters to chomp down on before being knocked unconscious by Anne’s beautiful doctor boyfriend, Dan.
Not only did Hardy’s choice add to the humor aspect of the scene but it also showed Eddie’s de-evolution after bonding with Venom in an entirely new, creative way. This was one of the scenes that was just so utterly ridiculous I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at it. There was something about the resigned shame that Hardy conveyed as he sank down into that tank full of lobsters that broke the intensity of Eddie having a psychological breakdown into a cinematically interesting moment.
See my previous article about why you should go see Venom in theaters today!