Venom: The Last Dance Review
I guess 2024 is the year of closing out Marvel trilogies, earlier this year we got Deadpool & Wolverine and this weekend we got Venom: The Last Dance. How does this movie compare to the other films of the franchise? Is it a good close end to the trilogy? Let’s talk about it!
The Good
Like the previous films of the trilogy, the best thing about this movie is the relationship between Eddie Brock and Venom. They’re really the glue holding this franchise together, quite frankly the best thing about this entire trilogy. You gotta give the credit to Tom Hardy who is clearly having a lot of fun and going for it. In all three of these movies, they give both Eddie and Venom a great moment. Some of them are fun moments, some of them are weird moments. No matter what the moment is, it’s fun. That’s very much the case with this movie, both given these fun moments. Especially when they get to Vegas, there’s a lot of hijinks that go down. Some of it maybe goes a bit far, but they do put a smile on my face. One of the things they add to this movie about the relationship between Eddie and Venom is there’s more heart. Without spoiling anything, this movie is the last of the trilogy and they find a way to use that to pull out emotions from you. There is a heartfelt tone present in the entire movie, you see how their relationship has grown and changed from the first film to this film.
Also, there is some fun Venom action in this movie. This movie had the biggest budget of the bunch, I believe it cost $120 million and you can see that on screen. There’s bigger action set pieces, they put Venom in new and different environments that we haven’t seen him before. There’s a cool early one in a river where the military shows up trying to capture Eddie and Venom is trying to chase them through the water. It’s just a fun and cool sequence, that’s something a bit different for the franchise but it works. I think people are also going to be talking about the third act and what it does. The trailers did a good job of hiding what happens, so I don’t wanna spoil anything but there’s a lot of fun that comes with it. It’s easily the biggest third act of the trilogy, there’s the most carnage that takes place. Maybe it’s a bit goofy, but it fits inline with the trilogy and feels like a good third act to close out this movie.
Another positive thing here, there’s a number of fun side characters here. They’re pretty much all new characters, the only returning side character is Mrs. Chen, the drug store owner. I thought the new side characters were fun, they aren’t anything too special. But they fit the movie and they have fun moments. The most prominent ones would be the hippie family that Eddie encounters. The dad of the family is played by Rhys Ifans, which is strange casting because he played The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man. Of all the actors you could have cast, you had to pick him. He has some funny moments, he gets a moment in the third act that got the biggest reaction out of my theater. His entire family worked as a whole a lot better than I thought. I thought they were going to throw away annoying characters but they weren’t. Some of our antagonist type characters, Chiwetel Ejifoir, aren’t doing anything special but they fit the movie and since they’re good actors they’re solid enough in this movie.
Finally, as the close out to this trilogy, I think this movie does a solid job of closing things out. Like I said earlier, this is probably the most heartfelt of the Venom movies while still not being this incredibly emotional film. Part of that heartfelt goes back to ways it wraps things up. Given that everybody seems to be coming back, it wouldn’t shock me if we see Tom Hardy in an upcoming MCU movie. But if this was the last time that we ever saw Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock and Venom, I would feel satisfied.
The Bad
While there is a lot of fun to be had here, I was never bored watching the movie there’s quite a few problems here. The big problem with this movie, the story and script are a mess. It’s interesting because the basic plot of the film, the one sentence synopsis of the film, is very simple. Eddie and Venom are on the run from the government after being framed while Venom’s home planet comes to Earth. That’s the basic synopsis of the film, but there’s so many subplots and side characters that it makes the movie so unfocused. They have all of these ideas that they went to have in the movie, but they’re ideas that don’t really go anywhere. The director of this movie is Kelly Marcel, who wrote this entire trilogy, this is her directorial debut. In interviews, she said that there are ideas that she’s had for this franchise since the first movie. And now that she’s a director, she got to include those moments in this movie and you definitely feel that. In the trailers, you get this scene of Venom putting the symbiote on a horse, it’s a fun bit but doesn’t necessarily tie into the rest of the movie. That entire bit is pretty much shown in the trailer, it’s a fun bit but it doesn’t need to be there. Even the sequence with Mrs. Chen in Vegas, once again pretty much Mrs. Chen’s entire sequence is shown in the trailers. That sequence doesn’t really mean much. There’s a lot of stuff in here that doesn’t really go anyway, it’s superficially fun sequences, but don’t tie together. Even some of the side characters feel way underdeveloped. They set up Juno Temple’s character to have an emotional connection to what’s going on, that’s set up in her introduction scene but it’s not mentioned anywhere else. Even what they do in the third act is a fun sequence, but it’s not really set up. That should have been what’s set up earlier on, so when the third act happens it does have some payoff. I don’t know if this movie had massive reshoots and they shot one movie, but Sony didn’t like it so they wanted to change it up. I don’t know, but it feels like this wasn’t the movie they set out to make. This film had to stop due the strikes last year, I don’t know if that had anything to do with it.
Related to that, there’s a lot of wasted potential in this movie. Where the idea of taking Eddie and Venom to Vegas should be a lot of fun. You can imagine a really fun action set piece of Venom causing carnage in Vegas, with the hotels and casinos. But you only have our Eddie and Venom there so they can dance with Mrs. Chen. Even the idea of the villain doesn't really go anywhere. The villain of the movie is Knull. I'm not familiar with the character from the comics, but he’s the king of the symbiotes. He’s just there in the background, sending creepy monsters to Earth to kill Venom. It’s weird the way that he’s used, because Andy Serkis voices Knull. Serkis voices the villain and they do nothing with him. I was expecting Knull to show up in the finale and have a showdown with Venom, nope. While I was watching this movie, I was picturing a better version. You remove some of the subplots and you make Knull the villain of the movie, you focus on the symbiote side of things. We could have gotten a very cool movie, but we didn’t. That’s a big problem when you’re watching a movie and I’m picturing something better.
Finally, there’s some big laps in the logic of the plot. Like I said earlier, the movie is Eddie and Venom on the run from the government. Basically it’s The Fugitive with Venom, that sounds cool. Within the first 10 minutes of the movie, Eddie and Venom see a news report of them on a tv talking about how they’re framed. Venom says “if we’re on a tv here, we’re on a tv everywhere”. Which is true, so then why do they go to Vegas? They’re on the run, trying to stay hidden and keep a low profile so they go to Vegas. One of the most populated cities in the United States, there’s security, people, and tvs everywhere and somehow nobody in Vegas goes “hey, that’s the wanted guy from the tv”. Even with that, Venom isn’t necessarily doing a great job of keeping a low profile. Eddie starts acting very strange at a slot machine, and nobody bats an eye.
Final Thoughts: In general, Venom: The Last Dance wasn’t great. This was a disappointment for me, I think it easily could have been better but they crammed too much into the movie, so it’s unfocused and unsatisfying. You can picture a better movie in your head, you picture a version of this movie that works a whole lot better. If you enjoyed the previous two movies, you’ll probably have some with it. But if you didn’t care for those movies, there’s nothing about this movie that’s going to win you back.
The Score: 7.3/10 (C)
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