[EXPRESSO] Venom: The Last Dance (2024) | Knull In My Soup

Venom’s most likely uncanonical (for now anyway) adventures with his human host Eddie Brock come to an end in Venom The Last Dance, the third and final movie of the series, already prodiving something rarer than an unicorn for modern superhero films: closure.

Sure, they will most likely do some films about the Symbiotes or whatever later, but this one does actually close this storyline.

Speaking of which, we continue to follow Eddie and Venom’s escape from the authorities, now complicated by the army having captured the other Symbiotes in a hidden desert base, and especially by Knull, an imprisoned god that created the Symbiotes and is sending out monster aliens (called Xenophages) around the galaxy in order to find and retrieve the Codex, the only thing able to break him free.

That said, it’s a Venom film, meaning it’s a mess of garbage that somehow manages to work in spite of the many, many issues it has, and be entertaining enough, sporting a trashy 90s charm, and while The Last Dance’s plot feels more structured and focused (more than Let There Be Carnage), the humour is even worse (it’s funnier when it doesn’t mean to), the villain is easy to forget even exists, characters are prone to overconvenient bouts so the plot can continue, and while the new Symbiotes are cool, they don’t do much until the end.

On the flipside it’s not drawn out, it’s a film that goes by fast, maybe too fast, as it’s hard for anything of note to “sink in”, with the highlights being the Venom Horse and a hippie UFO believer than bring his family along for a road trip to Area 51, for what amounts to a somewhat generic ending to the series and about the same level of “quality” seen before.

[EXPRESSO] Madame Web (2024) | Spider Vision

The new entry in Sony’s Spider Man Universe side of Marvel offerings, tackling the titural and lesser known – to mainstream audiences – figure of Madame Web, AKA Cassandra Web (Dakota Johnson), a woman working as a paramedic that awakens her powers of clairvoyance after a tragic incident, and will have to confront her mysterious past to help three young women unaware of being hunted down by a menacing “spider person”.

So, it’s not good, at all, i didn’t hate it or was let down, it’s at least inoffensive, as in, it’s hard to feel anything much from a movie that feels directed and acted in autopilot, the cast it’s good but the characters are shallow as hell and the movie’s overall light tone (fine in itself ) kinda backfires in making it hard to care about anything that happens.

Ignoring the fact its about a character intrisically linked to Spider Man, has “evil Spiderman” for its boring ass villain, yet it can’t/won’t even mention the Man-O’-Spiders, Madame Web is just a very unispired origin story that coasts on doing the bare minimum, one it could have been cut to 90 minutes, since it’s fairly repetitive, unengaging, looks cheap, and feels more like a set up for other films than anything, a movie set in 2003 that also perfectly feels like the kind of bad/subpar cinecomic that would have come out back then.

I was inclined on trying to “defend” it due to how harsh it’s being reviewed….. but sorry, this one IS pretty bad and lacks the trashy fun factor of the Venon movies or Morbius, with very little to like, feeling extremely throaway to boot, just “product” that makes futile even feeling angry about it.

Maybe the Kraven The Hunter movie coming out this summer will be better?

[EXPRESSO] Morbius (2022) | Dr. Acula, MD

The “Sony” side of the Marvel movies now moves from fairly popular and well know Venom to a lot more obscure one, Morbius. General audiences sure aren’t familiar with him, myself i barely know of him as a saw a high quality collectable statue as an upcoming item years ago.

Which is good, makes sense to make movie about lesser known characters from the huge roster of Marvel’s back catalogue (with beloved popular actor Jared Leto in the lead to also ensure huge turn-out) and this one if nothing else follows the trail of the two Venom movies, as in it’s an anti-hero, the doctor Michael Morbius, plagued by a rare blood disease and wanting to save everyone with his illness, Morbius takes a desperate gamble in a remote cave with bats.

What seems to be the long awaited cure turns out to be also a curse, as he start developing a craving for human blood and powers akin to a vampire bat.

If Venom was a reminder that superheroes movies could be sketchy but still entertain despite having a lot of problems, Morbius it’s a throwback to the early to mid-2000s era of the genre, as in, despite a lot of money in effects and a fun premise, they often turned out irremediably boring as shit, lifeless despite the fantastical elements, and a pile of hot garbage overall.

Formulaic, tiresome, boring everything, from plot to characters to themes, even the shitty fights way too overreliant on FXs (complete with an underwhelming final confrontation), Morbius has it all, takes itself seriously, and sequelbaits hard to boot.

You don’t always need to be good or perfect, but when everything it’s so shoddy, trite and not very interesting, at least you could be entertaining.

This is sadly just boring garbage. Pity. 😦