The highlight of the first Venom: The Last Dance trailer was the symbiote taking over a horse, which… isn’t exactly high praise. In the just-released second preview, however, things are looking more intriguing and unexpectedly high-stakes.
We already knew that the third Venom movie was meant to be the ‘end of the line’ for Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and the chatty Venom symbiote unless some sort of very half-assed crossover event movie happens with Morbius, Kraven, and whatnot. The first trailer also introduced Chiwetel Ejiofor as a military-type and Juno Temple as a scientist both trying to hunt down and understand the symbiote just as a major invasion hits Earth. Now, the plot is getting a bit more complicated.
One major complaint about the two Venom movies released so far, which have done really well at the box office despite the middling critical receptions, was that they lacked compelling-enough villains or threats that went beyond just another guy wearing a symbiote in a different colour. Sure, Carnage is a big villain from the comic books, but he was wasted alongside Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kassady. Now, in the final stretch, the creatives and producers behind the saga are raising the stakes by bringing Knull, the god and creator of all the hungry symbiotes, into the fold.
Given what we know about the overall plot and the expected runtime of the movie (these are always on the shorter side), chances are Knull won’t be doing much besides showing up in a flashback and plotting in the shadows, but maybe Venom 3 has an ace up its sleeve. Regardless, it’s the kind of baffling, last-minute move we expect at this point from Sony-produced Marvel movies. You can check out the trailer for yourself below:
Besides Knull’s surprise appearance, this second trailer promises an emotional goodbye between Eddie and Venom, which, honestly, sounds like the most enticing thing about this whole movie, as the filmmakers have cracked (almost by mistake) a refreshingly heartfelt relationship between these two male leads. In fact, Venom 2 veered into bromance territory quite often. Otherwise, it all largely looks as conceptually dated as the two previous movies… but might be just enough to convince casual moviegoers once again.
Meanwhile, Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios seem to be getting the next Tom Holland-led Spider-Man movie off the ground sooner rather than later, with Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton now attached to helm it. Word on the street is that the chunk of Venom symbiote left behind in Earth-616 during No Way Home’s post-credits scene will factor in the plot, so we’re not done with symbiotes on the big screen even if Sony shuts down the solo Venom saga.
