“Venom: The Last Dance” will be released in October 2024. How did the franchise manage to make 3 films in 6 years despite devastating reviews and poor box office?
- The first “Venom” film starring Tom Hardy was released in 2018, and the finale of the trilogy will be released in October 2024.
- The first film was received rather lukewarmly by fans and critics, and the second one was also a flop at the box office.
- None of this stops Sony from investing another hundred million in a film that looks exactly like its predecessors.
Here it is, the trailer for the third part of the superhero series with Tom Hardy: “Venom: The Last Dance”. We see a few humorous exchanges between Eddie Brock (Hardy) and his alter ego Venom, lots of action and basically exactly what we saw in the first two “Venom” films.
The third film is directed by Kelly Marcel, who is making her directorial debut. She had previously made a name for herself as a screenwriter and worked on the two previous “Venom” films. The first film was directed by Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”) and the second part by Andy Serkis (“The Lord of the Rings”).
The film series has a higher turnover of directors than Hamburger SV has a turnover of coaches, but that doesn’t mean anything. The fact that the films all seem very similar somehow doesn’t necessarily mean that the various directors are allowed to implement their own artistic visions.
There are various types of films in the film landscape. Directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, for example, have complete freedom when making their films. They can implement their visions without restrictions and their films therefore bear their own signature. They are therefore the originators, the authors of the cinematic work.
Studio films, on the other hand, are less under the banner of the director and more under the studio’s agenda. If it’s a Marvel film, Marvel is the brand. Everything is subordinated to Marvel and it’s not the director who is the selling point, but Marvel. Accordingly, artistic decisions made by the director are subordinated to the studio’s decisions. In the case of “Venom,” Sony is the studio that only has limited rights to Marvel characters. Sony wants to build its own cinematic universe with these, mainly “Spider-Man” villains.
3 films in 6 years: How could three films be made so quickly? – Comment Tom Hardy once again plays the leading role in “Venom 3” (Source: tmdb.org)
Let’s think back to 2018, when the first “Venom” film starring Tom Hardy was released. Back then, there was great anticipation when Sony dedicated itself to the “Spider-Man” villain. However, when the film was released in theaters, the excitement fizzled out and the film received mediocre to negative reviews.
“Venom” has a rating of 6.6 on the film review platform IMDb and a Tomatometer of 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. At the box office, however, the film’s box office gross of over $800 million was enough to justify a sequel, which then received even worse ratings on IMDb.
With a rating of 5.9, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” fares worse than its predecessor, but on Rotten Tomatoes it has a slightly better rating of 57%, although it’s still not good. The box office also didn’t ring as loudly, with box office revenues of 500 million US dollars. So why is a third film coming out now?
It’s almost frightening that a film series that is neither particularly successful nor particularly highly praised has managed to produce three films in such a short space of time. What kind of society do we live in where film studios think they can put such films in front of us? Why should so much money that is needed elsewhere in our world go into such – excuse me! – nonsense?!
Faced with so much mediocrity, it is clear that people no longer go to the cinema
A lot is happening on the cinema front at the moment. There is a lot of discussion about the added value of cinemas in the face of emerging streaming services. Cinemas are finding it increasingly difficult to remain profitable. In addition, large film studios such as Disney and Sony are monopolizing the cinema screens with increasingly similar formula films such as superheroes, animated films, etc.
There is hardly any room left for independent cinema. Cult directors such as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola were even critical of this development. Coppola went so far as to not even refer to superheroes as “cinema”. Scorsese called them “rollercoaster rides”.
This is not cinema. Honestly, the closest thing to it for me, as well made as they are, with actors doing their best, are theme parks. It is not cinema of human beings trying to convey emotions, psychological experiences to other people.
Martin Scorsese on superhero movies
Despite being defended by many other directors such as James Gunn, superhero films have nevertheless experienced a clear downward trend in recent years. Ratings have weakened and Marvel is no longer able to prevail at the box office as it did in 2019 with “Avengers: Endgame”.
Audiences are presented with one mediocre film after another, each copying the same formula from its predecessor, and “Venom” is the prime example. They aren’t even good films, and they aren’t watched as widely as other Marvel films, and yet part 3 is coming.
The question arises as to who asked why the studios did not come up with something new and why the film is expected to do well at the box office when everything points to a flop.
One reason could of course be that Sony only has the rights to Spider-Man characters like Venom as long as they make films about them. That’s also the reason why “The Amazing Spider-Man” (2012) came out so quickly as a remake after “Spider-Man 3” (2007). Otherwise, Sony would have lost the rights to Spider-Man.
The pressure to produce new films is enormous, but a Spider-Verse film, “Madame Web,” was recently released, so there is no need to follow up so quickly. And we don’t need to talk about “Madame Web” here… let’s hope Sony and the filmmakers put more effort into “Venom: The Last Dance”!
The film “Madame Web” has a Tomatometer of 11%, an IMDb rating of 3.9 and a box office gross of around 100 million US dollars, which does not even cover the full production and marketing costs.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) superhero quiz
(Source: tmdb.org)
Who is always annoyed by Deadpool but according to Wade is one of his best friends?
“Venom: The Last Dance”, the finale of the “Venom” trilogy, will be released in German cinemas on October 24, 2024. We’ll tell you what other Marvel releases we can expect in 2024 and 2025!
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