Won't someone please let poor Tom Hardy finally punch the Spider-Man?
"I would love to fight Spider-Man," Hardy told a NYCC crowd. "I would love to fight him now. I’m happy to fight Spider-Man today, 100 percent."
Photo: Angel Delgado/Getty Images
Why won’t they just let Tom Hardy punch the Spider-Man?
It’s a question the actor himself addressed during an appearance at New York Comic-Con tonight, deploying patter that wouldn’t have felt out of place in the mouth of professional wrestler Crusher Hogan: “I would love to fight Spider-Man,” Hardy declared to the crowd. “I would love to fight him now. I’m happy to fight Spider-Man today, 100 percent.”
Sadly, Spider-Man did not immediately present himself for ritual combat—after all, his script isn’t good enough yet, according to Tom Holland—and so Hardy was forced to be part of a panel for Venom: The Last Dance, instead. The upcoming film, which arrives in theaters in a week, concerns itself with the complicated interplay of professional ego, off-court chaos, and sheer athleticism that powered the Chicago Bulls on the road to championship glory in the late nineties and wait, no, that was Venom-free ESPN docuseries The Last Dance, from 2020. This film is actually about Eddie Brock and his Big, Gooey Friend getting into what’s looking like some serious trouble, with a lot of suggestions that not everybody’s various goos will be intact by the time the credits roll.
Hardy was clear that The Last Dance will be the final movie of this story, calling it “the final piece in that trilogy, and we’re really excited about that.” (Producers, meanwhile, were happy to hint at other possible symbiote stories, including one focused on recent big Marvel villain Knull.) But also: ” I would never say never,” Hardy noted vis a vis throwing a car at Spider-Man, or maybe trying to eat his brain. After all, people with good bladder control (or YouTube) have already seen multiple crossovers between Sony’s villain-focused VenomVerse and the Marvel Cinematic Universe; Hardy himself appeared briefly in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, albeit in a way that didn’t let him punch any spider-folk. The whole concept of a Spider-Man universe that doesn’t have any Spider-Men in it has mostly lost its novelty at this point, although the two extant Venom movies are genuinely fun enough that we don’t begrudge the project its existence. (Sit down, Morbius; nobody’s talking to you.) But Hardy clearly has a dream, and we fully endorse it: Let the Big Goo Man punch the Spider-Man. It’s what everybody wants!