Elon Musk Is Basically the Villain of the 'Venom' Movie The Tesla and SpaceX founder inspired Riz Ahmed's character in the superhero film.
By Stephen J. Bronner •
Elon Musk was famously an inspiration for Robert Downey Jr.'s take on Iron Man alter ego Tony Stark. Now, the billionaire is also the muse for a much more villainous comic book character.
In the new Sony film Venom, one of Spider-Man's most famous rivals, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) merges with an alien symbiote and squares off against Carlton Drake, a tech billionaire who uses his fortune to explore space. Sound familiar?
It did to critics who have seen the movie, who immediately pointed to the character's similarities to Musk. (Of course, the real Musk wouldn't stoop to experimenting on people with scary alien goo. We hope.) Still, Riz Ahmed, the Emmy-winning actor portraying Drake, resisted calling his character evil.
"I honestly think my character has good intentions," Ahmed told The Intercept's Mehdi Hasan. "We've ruined this planet; we've brought it to the brink of ecological collapse; it's gonna get to a point where humanity can't survive here so we're going to have to find another home."
Hmm…
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Ahmed added, "Carlton Drake is trying to do that. … Obviously, there's lots of real-life examples of people doing similar things and lots of billionaire industrialists sending rockets into space to try and explore it, enhance our life or extend the potential for our species' existence. Is that bad?"
You can decide for yourself when Venom releases on Friday.
