In the Marvel/Columbia Pictures action thriller Venom, opening October 5, British actor Tom Hardy stars as Eddie Brock, a disgraced journalist who merges with an alien symbiote to become the black-clad, super-powered antihero of the film’s title. Like his nightmarish alter ego, the watch that Hardy’s Brock wears in the film is defined by its dark exterior and gritty toughness: the Bremont U-2/51 Jet, launched this year in London and making its U.S. debut at WatchTime New York, America’s Luxury Watch Show, on October 26-27.
The watch is the latest addition to Bremont’s U-2 range, which the British watch manufacturer originally developed for select clients in elite military squadrons. The U-2/51 Jet draws design inspiration from several of these earlier models as well as from a specific branch of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) — the RAF 100 Squadron, the first team formed for night bombing, in 1917. The resulting watch is a veritable stealth bomber for the wrist — and the perfect wristwear for Hardy’s shadow-crawling, night-stalking “lethal protector,” Venom.
The watch’s jet-black case is made of DLC-coated steel and features Bremont’s now familiar “Trip-Tick” case construction. Measuring 43 mm in diameter and equipped with a patented “Roto-Click” interior rotating bezel marked at the 5-minute indications and operated by the 4 o’clock crown. A double-nonreflective-coated, scratch-resistant sapphire crystal covers the dial while an additional smoke-tinted crystal in the caseback offers a view of the self-winding, COSC-certified movement, Bremont’s Caliber BE-36AE, with a Bremont-modified skeletonized rotor and a 38-hour power reserve.
On the black dial, the triangular hands have been blued, heat treated, and coated with a faux-patina aged luminous substance called “Vintage ’51,” patented by Bremont and used previously on the brand’s Limited Edition P-51 timepiece. The innovative R&D department also experimented with a new type of anodization to achieve the deep black color of the aluminum case middle.
Like all previous models in Bremont’s U2 collection — and like Venom himself in the new movie — this watch is battle-tested: flown on missions reaching up to 80,000 feet over 12 hours and subjected to temperatures as low as -50 degrees. The Bremont U-2/51 Jet is priced at $5,395.
If you want to see the watch put through its paces on Tom Hardy’s wrist, catch Venom in the theaters this October. If you’re interested in checking it out in person, reserve you spot now for WatchTime New York at Manhattan’s Gotham Hall.
