Released back in 2018, Venom, the beginning of what is now a trilogy arrived as a refreshing look into the darker edge of the Spidey canon with its first film starring Tom Hardy. With co-star Michelle Williams returning for the sequel, director Andy Serkis delivered Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and the character and its role in the wider Marvel world was revealed… sort of. Finally at film’s end, protagonist Eddie sees J.K. Simmons J. Jonah Jameson appear on TV, delivering the bombshell news that Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is Spider-Man–that’s the Spidey who crossed over from Sony into Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.
But Williams was the heart of the first two movies, and she’s not listed in the cast for the third movie in the trilogy–billed as the last–Venom: The Last Dance. Can the next entry be as good without her?
Check out the final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance:
Directed by Kelly Marcel, writer on the first two movies, Venom: The Last Dance co-stars The Offer and Fargo’s Juno Temple as villain (?) Dr. Payne (a twist on a minor Marvel baddie). It has a lot going on, but nothing obviously related to combining the worlds of Sony Marvel with Disney Marvel. Instead of the fun that fans want, it’s leaning toward to the teary, with The End for one or more of Eddie and Venom ahead.
It’s no secret: the humor makes Eddie and Venom work. It would be nice if they brought back the end credits theme from the first movie, wouldn’t it? But why is Chiwetel Ejiofor wearing military fatigues instead of some kind of Mordo robes? (Hey, Sony, don’t even tell us he’s playing another Marvel character).
We pegged the second installment as the best superhero film of 2021 here at borg. In 2018 we skipped over the first for Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse. But if you wanted to watch any of the four over and over, which would you pick today?
Everything is related. That’s what you learned if you watched Marvel over the past few years, beginning with Black Widow, threading into Hawkeye, Loki, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, weaving into Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, Loki, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse, then into the surprisingly good The Marvels and Madame Web, and soon into Noir starring Nicolas Cage. What’s the point of running a franchise as big as Marvel if it all isn’t interconnected? You may have thought the Sony-Disney marriage was going to happen in WandaVision, when Sony X-Men’s Quicksilver showed up on Disney Wanda and Vision’s doorstep, but for whatever reason it didn’t. Ryan Reynolds makes jokes about Disney and Sony as Deadpool, yet Marvel–or Disney and Sony–are afraid to strike the match. Well, everything should be related. Hopefully Sony and Marvel make room for some of that.
Venom: The Last Dance arrives in theaters October 25, 2024.
C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg
