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Final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance introduces Knull, god of symbiotes

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The end is near —

“This world can’t survive if you stay together.”

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Tom Hardy returns for one more round as host of an alien symbiote, in Venom: The Last Dance.

Tom Hardy is back for one last hurrah as investigative journalist Eddie Brock, host of an alien symbiote that imparts superhuman powers to its host, in the final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance. The trailer has all the wise-cracking “buddy cop” vibes and fast-paced action we’ve come to expect from the franchise, including a trip to Vegas where Venom discovers the addictive allure of slot machines. But there are also hints of an inevitable bittersweet farewell—because this time they’ll face off against Knull, god-creator of the symbiotes.

(Spoilers for Venom and Venom: There Will Be Carnage below.)

As previously reported, the first film in the franchise served as an origin story for our antihero. A bioengineering firm called the Life Foundation discovered a comet covered with symbiotic lifeforms and brought four samples back to Earth. Brock’s then-fiancée, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), showed him classified documents revealing that the foundation was conducting human/symbiote experiments. The symbiotes needed oxygen-breathing hosts to survive, but they invariably ended up killing those hosts.

Brock ended up infected with one of the symbiotes, named Venom. Venom revealed that the symbiotes are intent on taking over Earth by possessing/devouring all humans, but Brock ultimately struck up a bargain with Venom, and they decided to protect Earth instead. Together, they took on Life Foundation CEO Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), infected with a symbiote called Riot. Naturally, they won.

Venom was released in October 2018 and was roundly panned by critics, several of whom specifically bemoaned the lack of a Spider-Man connection. Audiences, however, begged to differ. Venom racked up $856 million globally. Hardy had already committed to two sequels, and a mid-credits sequence featured Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady taunting Brock (who was interviewing Kasady for a story) from his cell. Kasady vowed to escape and bring “carnage,” leaving little doubt as to the villain’s identity in a sequel.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage, directed by Andy Serkis, was released in 2021, also to mixed reviews and a strong box office, grossing $506.9 million worldwide. That film ended with Brock and Venom victorious over Kasady and heading off for a well-deserved vacation while the duo pondered their next steps. In a post-credits scene, Venom told Brock that he and his fellow symbiotes knew about other universes, at which point there was blinding light, and they were transported into the Marvel Cinematic Universe—a direct result of the spell cast by Doctor Strange in Spider-Man: No Way Home. (At the time, there were plans for a future crossover film with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.)

“With you to the end”

Serkis was unable to return as director for The Last Dance, but Kelly Marcel, who wrote the screenplay for Carnage, stepped in to make her directorial debut. Per the official premise:

In Venom: The Last Dance, Tom Hardy returns as Venom, one of Marvel’s greatest and most complex characters, for the final film in the trilogy. Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.

In addition to Hardy, Peggy Lu is back as convenience store owner Mrs. Chen, who befriended Eddie and Venom early on. Also returning is Stephen Graham as Detective Patrick Mulligan, who figured prominently in There Will Be Carnage and is now infected with his own symbiote named Toxin.

Cristo Fernández will reprise his role as the bartender in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man. Rhys Ifans played Curt Connors/Lizard in that film but will play a man named Martin in The Last Dance. Is there a secret connection? We’ll have to wait and see. (It seems after two outings, Williams won’t be reprising her role as Anne in the third and final film.) The cast also includes Chiwetel Ejiofor as a soldier intent on capturing Venom; and Alanna Ubach and Clark Backo in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

Venom: The Last Dance hits theaters on October 25, 2024.

Listing image by YouTube/Sony Pictures

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Kraven the Hunter’s new trailer gives us a dark, gore-filled revenge story

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“When the man comes around” —

It’s the latest installment in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which has floundered recently.

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Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train) plays the title character in the forthcoming film Kraven the Hunter.

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) got off to a strong start with Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), both of which racked up high box office earnings despite mixed-to-negative reviews from critics. But then the studio foundered badly with a couple of box office flops: 2022’s Morbius and 2024’s Madame Web.

Sony hopes to right the ship with a third Venom film in October (The Last Dance) and the much-delayed Kraven the Hunter this December. We’ve got a new trailer for the latter, leaning heavily into R-rated gore and set to Johnny Cash’s moodily atmospheric “The Man Comes Around.” It’s an entirely different, darker vibe from prior offerings: a revenge narrative rife with violence and daddy issues. Color us intrigued.

Comic book fans are well acquainted with Kraven as one of Spider-Man’s most formidable foes, a founding member of the Sinister Six. He’s a Russian immigrant with an aristocratic background who fled his home country when Tsar Nicholas II’s reign collapsed in 1917. He’s a big game hunter with enhanced abilities thanks to ingesting a mysterious potion made from jungle herbs. He’s very hard to injure, has super-human strength, and enhanced sight, hearing, and smell, as well as being a good tactician with excellent hand-to-hand combat skills.

Screenwriter Richard Wenk has said that Sony intended to adapt the critically acclaimed 1987 storyline in Kraven’s Last Hunt by J.M. DeMatteis, Mike Zeck, and Bob McLeod, which leaned heavily into the character’s Russian origins to create a very Dostoyevsky-like arc of a tortured soul. That storyline features an older Kraven whose health is failing who decides to hunt Spider-Man one last time, whereas the film is clearly an origin story. And Kraven actually dies by suicide in that comic arc, but we’re guessing Sony has plans to use him in other SSU films, with or without his arch-nemesis Spider-Man.

Per the official premise:

Kraven the Hunter is the visceral, action-packed origin story of how and why one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.

In addition to Taylor-Johnson and Crowe, the cast includes Ariana DeBose as the voodoo priestess Calypso, Kraven’s love interest; Fred Hechinger as Dmitri Smerdyakov, aka Chameleon, Kraven’s half-brother; Alessandro Nivola as Aleksei Sytsevich, aka Rhino, a Russian mercenary who can transform into a human/rhino hybrid; Christopher Abbott as a mercenary and assassin called the Foreigner; and Levi Miller as young Sergei.

Kraven the Hunter hits theaters on December 13, 2024.

Listing image by YouTube/Sony Pictures

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