After years of disappointing fans with their superhero ventures, Sony seems to have learned nothing. Coming fresh off the dazzling failure of Madame Web, the production house continues to lower the bar with each successive entry into its ‘Spider-Verse,’ given the recent performance of Tom Hardy’s Venom 3: The Last Dance.
The last film for Hardy and a send-off for his beloved symbiote, Venom, was just released in the United States to generally bad reviews. Yes, the film seems bad but critics should stop with the ‘Knull was wasted’ narrative already.
Spoiler Alert !!!
Contains Spoilers for Venom 3: The Last Dance!
Tom Hardy’s Venom 3: The Last Dance Fails to Amaze
At this point, one would think Sony has learned from its past mistakes and amended its ways. But that is hardly the case as Tom Hardy‘s literal last dance, Venom 3: The Last Dance has turned out to be yet another disappointing entry into the billion-dollar production house’s superhero world.
Potentially bringing Venom for the last time on the big screen, the film featured the symbiote sacrificing himself to save the universe from the supervillain Knull and his Xenophage. Despite being his send-off, the fan-favorite symbiote was hardly on screen for long.
Currently having 37% on Rotten Tomatoes (carrying forward the ‘tradition’ for its two predecessors), Venom 3 is a film full of mindless plot, messy narrative arcs, and undeveloped characters, with a few interesting action scenes thrown together that strangely make the film at least watchable.
Currently eyeing a $180 million opening at the global box office (via Deadline), critics have found several issues with the film. The chief among them is the ‘Knull was wasted’ narrative. While all their issues and concerns are understandable, it was on Knull that they go wrong for he was never supposed to be the main villain of the film.
Venom 3: Knull was NOT wasted!
Critics have been meticulously picking apart each and everything that went wrong with Tom Hardy’s Venom 3: The Last Dance. From criticizing the film’s direction to its farewell to Venom, they might be right about everything but Knull is where they are making a mistake. The supervillain debuting for the first time in live-action, was featured briefly in the film.
“Knull was wasted” wow so you could say Thanos was “wasted” in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.1 because it’s the same thing in GotG1 they were teasing Thanos for other movies in the future and that’s the exact same thing Venom: the last dance is doing for Knull
— Jake Sully (@Avatar_TheAsh) October 25, 2024
It was also his minions, the alien entities, Xenophage, sent by him, who ended up becoming the main adversaries in Venom 3. Yet, his time brief appearances were not at all wasted, for he was never supposed to be the main enemy of Eddie Brock and Venom. Writer-director Kelly Marcel, via an email to IGN, revealed,
One movie could never do justice to Knull. We were always aware of Knull but knew that we needed to lay the foundation of the Venom character, and his relationship with Eddie, before introducing him. This is just the beginning for Knull.
Thus, just a set-up film for Knull, Marcel later added that Venom 3 was only to touch upon the character’s beginnings and Sony would absolutely bring him back in the future given his importance to fans. Yet, critics’ and fan concerns are not entirely wrong given the track record of Sony. But at the same time, there is a possibility that Knull would make his way to the big screen sooner than we think, potentially in Spider-Man 4!
Venom 3: The Last Dance is in theatres now!
