3.0 out of 5.0 stars
“Venom: The Last Dance” was released Thursday, Oct. 24 by Sony Pictures. Serving as director Kelly Marcel’s final installment in the Venom franchise, “The Last Dance” was tasked with saying goodbye to audiences’ favorite symbiotic alien duo crisply and satisfyingly, while still keeping the pure ridiculousness the franchise is known for at its core. In this department, “Venom: The Last Dance” succeeds. While this movie does not particularly innovate or change the game, Tom Hardy delivers a fun final performance as both reporter Eddie Brock and Venom, an evil alien turned Eddie’s soulmate.
The plot is simple, yet chaotic. Eddie and Venom are on the run from both the military, and a giant alien bug sent by Venom’s creator to kill them. It feels like for the first time, Sony fully embraced the wackiness of Venom as a character. Venom possesses a frog, a fish, a horse and many other random animals, all of which lead to some absurd action scenes.
At the end of the day, Venom always returns to his original host, Eddie. By far the most entertaining aspect of “The Last Dance” was seeing how Eddie and Venom bounced off of each other. Venom might be the only franchise to date to have audiences excited coming out of the theater after watching a man talk to himself while putting on a funny voice for two hours. Eddie and Venom’s bond was palpable and brought some much-needed heart and relatability to this insane rollercoaster of a movie.
Before going to see this movie, one must ask themselves what they want out of their moviegoing experience. If you are looking for a deep, emotional journey that makes you think, you are in the wrong place. But if you’re looking for an action-packed, absurd theater experience with a lot of laughs, you should see “Venom: The Last Dance.”
The plot is full of conveniences, stupid decisions, and at times, lazy writing –– but it works. In a time where most superhero stories have to either be completely serious like Batman movies or completely meta like Deadpool movies, Venom strikes a middle ground.
Yet, this movie doesn’t get away with everything. It made some outright weird decisions that don’t make sense in the slightest. For example, the Venom franchise has a strange insistence on spending a lot of time introducing and focusing on random characters that could be easily removed from the film without changing much. This movie is no different. A branch of the military run by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Commander Strickland, Juno Temple’s Dr. Payne and Alanna Ubach’s Nova Moon, is chasing Venom while running a base in Area 51. These three new characters all could have had much less screen time.
One of the first things the movie makes sure the audience knows is that Dr. Payne’s brother got struck by lightning and she couldn’t save him. Though it technically paid off, this plotline felt out of place and did not need to be included. One second we’re laughing with Venom and the next we’re learning about this random character’s backstory that didn’t need to exist. There are many other examples of this, like the character who makes it known she loves Christmas and wears a Christmas pin on her jacket despite the fact it is July, or the family that Eddie and Venom ride along with. These people just invite this stranger into their car and then proceed to sing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” for two minutes. This is odd.
Although these are extremely bizarre character decisions, “The Last Dance” embraces its weirdness and makes it easy to look past them. If anything, they added to the campy, ridiculous nature of the film. This movie wraps up in a tragic, albeit funny way that gives Eddie and Venom their last dance and celebrates the strange corner of cinema these lovable antiheroes carved out for themselves.
Visually, this movie was bland. The cinematography did its job but didn’t stand out as compared to recent blockbusters. One thing that did stand out however, was the film’s use of color. No, there was no thematic use of color; this is not that type of movie. But it did embrace color. Where the first film and to an extent, the second, focused on dark shadows and bland city skylines, “The Last Dance” pops, embracing its comic book roots even further.
“The Last Dance” is by far the most ridiculous Venom movie to date. Where previous entries in the franchise opted to keep the concept at least semi-grounded, this film completely goes off the deep end in the most bombastic, action-packed and somewhat emotional way possible. Overall, “Venom: The Last Dance” is nothing to write home about, but boy is it a lot of fun. This final chapter in Venom’s story is full of heart, laughs and charm, and certainly succeeds in letting him go out with a bang.
