How Venom: The Last Dance repeats a glaring Marvel mistake

So ends another comic book movie trilogy, but what is it about the number three that the genre can’t get right? Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy and Fox’s original X-Men saga both bowed out on bum notes, while Blade: Trinity staked the franchise dead. Even The Dark Knight Rises is the black sheep of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. It’s not that there haven’t been some great threequels (we’re looking at you, Thor: Ragnarok), but Venom: The Last Dance is not the exception that proves the rule.

While there were once grand plans for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, it feels like the SSU is limping toward an inevitable end, like the DCEU releasing The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom simply because it had to. Although Ruben Fleischer’s Venom got the franchise off to a flying start in 2018, a little bit of our symbiote spirit has broken off with each entry. There’s plenty wrong with Venom: The Last Dance, but perhaps the most egregious issue is that it repeats one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s worst mistakes.

The MCU Issue

Critics have pointed out that there hasn’t been much fanfare for Venom: The Last Dance in terms of marketing. In this time of superhero saturation when even the once unshakable might of the MCU is starting to falter, it definitely feels like Sony is trying to fly this one under the radar. Still, what little marketing there has been teased an epic swan song for Eddie Brock’s (Tom Hardy) time with his symbiote sidekick. Unfortunately, the trailers have left us equally intrigued and confused by the inclusion of actors Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rhys Ifans.

Although the Venom movies aren’t technically classed as part of the ‘main’ MCU, there’s been a lot of discussion of when the SSU will inevitably cross paths with the world’s highest-grossing franchise. The end of Venom: Let There Be Carnage fanned the flames by putting Eddie Brock and his symbiote into the Earth-616 timeline of the MCU, although The Last Dance quickly undoes this in its opening scene. Having Venom in the MCU could’ve created something of a plot hole when you remember that Ejiofor played Baron Mordo in 2016’s Doctor Strange and its 2022 sequel.

Things get even more complicated due to Ifans portraying Dr. Kurt Connors/the Lizard in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man. Marc Webb’s Andrew Garfield-led movies are on a timeline all of their own, separate and apart from both the MCU and Venom movies; however, Ifans memorably reprised his role as Connors for the multiverse madness of Spider-Man: No Way Home. Would he come back for more in The Last Dance?

When Ifans first appeared in The Last Dance trailers, there were rampant theories that Connors could be putting his impressive brain and previous experience with the multiverse to good use and help Eddie, while others speculated he’d be playing the underwhelming big bad, Knull. Considering Knull lurks in the shadows for the movie’s entire runtime and ends up being little more than a tease for a potential future movie, I was half-expecting some mad reveal where Ifans’ character was revealed to be Knull in disguise. Instead, Ifans simply plays...an ordinary guy.

A Problematic Bohner

Unlike Ejiofor’s portrayal of Rex Strickland, who is a long-time Venom enemy from the pages of Marvel Comics, Ifans is playing Martin Moon, an ordinary guy who tells Eddie he’s an IT expert and alien fanatic. Eddie and Venom spend most of the final act keeping Martin and his family out of harm’s way. I assume they were added to give Eddie and Venom the chance to show a softer side, but the movie fails to wring much drama or comedy out of them.

Ifans playing just some dude called Martin reminds me of the divisive Ralph Bohner twist from the Marvel TV show WandaVision. In that show, actor Evan Peters is brought on to play a character we think is Wanda Maximoff's brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver. The MCU version of Quicksilver was briefly played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson but killed off in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Peters played him in X-Men: Days of Future Past , X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix. When he turned up on Wanda's doorstep in WandaVision, fans' jaws hit the floor. Adding Peters to the cast was not only a clever Uno reverse card on our expectations but also brought some levity to the series. It was all going so well until WandaVision’s finale revealed Uncle Pietro was just some Westview resident called Ralph Bohner.

Ralph Bohner remains one of the MCU’s ‘worst’ twists, up there with Iron Man 3’s Mandarin fakeout and Sharon Carter being the Power Broker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Instead of letting it go, WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer recently doubled down on this by bringing back Ralph Bohner back in Agatha All Along (although I can let that one slide because it's clearly supposed to be a bit of comic relief). I'm disappointed that the dire Dark Phoenix could be Peters’ last time playing Quicksilver, especially when the multiverse saga seemed like an easy way to legitimately add him to the mainline MCU. Oh well, there’s always Avengers: Secret Wars.

As for Venom: The Last Dance, I’m disappointed that I was among the many duped into thinking Ifans might be playing the Lizard one more time, or potentially, have an even bigger role in the SSU as Knull. Marvel movies are known to sometimes feature actors playing two different roles, but whereas Deadpool & Wolverine showed exactly how it should be done with Chris Evans reprising his role as Johnny Storm instead of Captain America, it’s a struggle to see why Ifans is in Venom: The Last Dance at all.

Morbius wasted Jared Harris’ Dr. Emil Nicholas as a minor addition to the story instead of revealing him to be some big bad like Dracula, while we dread to think what the viral scene of Rhino appearing in the Kraven the Hunter trailer is actually leading to. We know that Sony is struggling to get people interested in its ever-expanding Spider-Man-free Spider-Man Universe, and when it's wasting an actor of Rhys Ifans' caliber as Martin the alien fanatic, we can see why. This is one character that should’ve been left on the cutting room floor.

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