Venom: The Last Dance Trailer Teases the End of an Era
Eddie Brock is ready for one last ride with his symbiotic alter ego. Today, Sony released a trailer for Venom: The Last Dance, the third and (likely) final installment in their Venom series. This time, Venom is being hunted by the military and members of his species, who’ve traveled to Earth from their home planet. Tom Hardy returns as Eddie Brock, and he’s joined by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, and Alanna Ubach. Kelly Marcel, who wrote all three Venom films (the first one with Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg), directs this time. Venom: The Last Dance will arrive in theaters (exclusively, as the trailer makes sure to declare) on October 25, 2024, and you can see the trailer below:
I never watched the first two Venom movies, and this trailer gives me the same vibes the ones for those did. Venom: The Last Dance looks goofy and silly, undermining anything that might make Venom look cool with that ridiculously farcical voice and annoying jokes. The series feels like a relic from the 90s and early 2000s, when cinematic universes weren’t on anyone’s mind (unless they were having a Universal Monsters rewatch), and characters would be plucked from popular comics and adapted in ways that the studios felt wouldn’t confuse the audience too much, or at least keep things simple. That’s why there were so many changes from the comics (like non-mutant characters in the X-Men films being portrayed as mutants) and a Catwoman movie that had nothing to do with Batman. But despite the success they’ve had licensing Spider-Man to Marvel and Disney, Sony was determined to make their own Spider-Verse without Spider-Man, and here we are.
And the Venom movies have been successful, albeit moderately, especially the first one. That’s largely because, as I’ve discussed before, the budgets have been fairly restrained, and Venom: The Last Dance is maintaining that spending discipline. Unfortunately, Let There Be Carnage made over $300 million less than Venom, so it appears the series is trending down; combine that with the failure of Madame Web, the punchline of a movie Morbius became, and the likely bombing of Kraven the Hunter, and this universe looks like it’s on its way out. The trailer for Venom: The Last Dance very much feels like a swan song in that respect, with mentions of Venom’s probable death. This could be misdirection, but I wonder if they’re saying goodbye to the Venom films as a way of ending this experiment, with Kraven the Hunter a footnote in December. They’d also be paving the way for Venom to show up in the MCU’s Spider-Man movies, which was set up in a post-credits scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home. (Remember when this would have been an exciting prospect?)
As for the trailer itself, like I said, it does nothing for me. It’s just another round of laughless humor and goofy performances. There are ideas that could have been cool if a Venom series were developed properly (i.e., via Spider-Man) and taken even slightly seriously, but they look like they’ll have been wasted here. And it does appear that Venom: The Last Dance will live up to its title, closing out this strange wing of modern superhero cinema.
