Sony’s Spider-Man Universe may have served up two historic faceplants in the form of Madame Web and Morbius, but that’s all the more reason to be impressed when this franchise manages to put out a genuinely solid movie. Never underestimate the power of whiplash, folks. And if early viewers of Venom: The Last Dance are to be believed, such a moment is imminent.
It may seem unthinkable, as the SSU has been a notoriously incompetent enterprise up until now, but early reactions to Venom: The Last Dance paint an astoundingly hopeful picture, with unabashed praise and critical lauding of a good old-fashioned popcorn movie being the prevailing sentiment.
Special attention is being paid to the scope and stakes that Venom: The Last Dance has to offer compared to its franchise brethren. Perhaps most interesting, however, are the claims that it adheres to the same early-2000s superhero movie period piece stylings as Madame Web, except in a way that doesn’t suck.
At the very least, it’s reportedly tapping into the Thelma & Louise vibe that, frankly, you can’t make a live-action Venom movie without. That, ladies and gentlemen, counts for a whole heck of a lot.
This iteration of Venom might even grant a few nods to the wider comic book movie mythos that surrounds the SSU, and by the sounds of it, these references don’t come across as unthinkably, desperately myopic as those in Morbius.
Venom: The Last Dance wasn’t without its early detractors, though. Some admitted that while it accomplishes the task of being the best Venom movie out of the three, they nevertheless gave it a thumbs down on account of its inability to accomplish anything else.
Apparently, Venom: The Last Dance underachieves by going all-out with the premise’s gonzo possibilities, at the expense of story beats.
Tom Hardy stars once again as Eddie Brock, who goes on a dangerous-yet-rollicking adventure with his long-time companion, Venom, the symbiote he bonded with back in 2018. Soon Eddie is targeted by a research branch of the government, while Venom simultaneously gets targeted by hostile aliens from his home world. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Peggy Lu, Alanna Ubach, and Stephen Graham also star alongside Clark Backo and Cristo Fernández.
Despite the trilogy’s poor critical track record, the box office haul of Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage together number $1.36 billion, so it’s certainly not a series that the public has been sleeping on. And now, with the promise from so many viewers that this one is actually good, that’s a trend that may well continue on its healthy trajectory, even if superhero fatigue is potent at the moment.
In any case, that’s a hypothesis that we’ll have more information on shortly after Venom: The Last Dance hits theaters on Oct. 25.
