Marvel’s disgusting brothers are back for one more charmingly gross ride-along to save themselves, and possibly the planet. The final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance is here ahead of the film’s October release, and the trilogy closer looks poised to send the codependent duo off with a comedic bang and a Marvel villain deepcut.
In theaters October 25 (just in time to capitalize on pre-election angst), Venom: The Last Dance sees Tom Hardy’s bumbling Eddie Brock continue to be dragged along through life-threatening danger and hit-or-miss comedy beats by the alien symbiote Venom. Following the events of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, extraterrestrial Xenophages descend on Earth looking for the snarky black goo and his host. The newest trailer also mentions the creator of the symbiotes who’s coming to take them back, which comic book fans will know as Knull, the powerful dark deity behind the Necrosword.
Here’s a look:
The setup suggests Brock will have to make tough choices, one between his singular need for the symbiote and humanity’s survival against the new alien invaders, and one about how much debt to go into to satisfy Venom’s gambling addiction. An extended Las Vegas sequence plays like a parody of Ocean’s Eleven with Tom Hardy pissing himself one moment and looking like James Bond the next. The special effects continue to not look that great.
Hopefully it all looks a little better in the context of the whole movie. It has a runtime of close to two hours and 20 minutes, making it one of the longer movies in Sony’s Spider-Man cinematic universe. I loved the first Venom, which felt like a lowkey dirtbag comic book romp with zero expectations attached to it.
More recently, its $800 million box office take seems to have convinced Sony there is a future in Spider-Man side-characters, with Kraven the Hunter also getting an origin story this fall despite the meme-spawning failures of Morbius and Madame Web. We’ll find out next month if Brock and Venom can save not just their relationship but Sony’s ongoing superhero movie ambitions.