Venom Trilogy Ranked
This weekend, Venom: The Last Dance hits theaters, which means we have a new trilogy to discuss. So today, I’m going to be ranking the Venom trilogy. Let’s get started!
3. Venom: The Last Dance: This is a frustrating movie, because there’s a lot in here that I did have fun with. The biggest positive of this entire trilogy would be the relationship between Eddie and Venom. That’s very much the case with this movie, their bromance elevates the movie and provides the most entertainment of the entire movie. Since it’s trying to close out the trilogy, there’s more maturity to their relationship. The way they have the final moments of the movie between Eddie and Venom I think does work and closes out the trilogy good enough. There’s some fun action in this movie, they put Venom in new and different environments that are fun to watch. The third act being the stand out, probably the best third act of this trilogy. The big thing hurting this movie is its plot, that’s messy, unfocused, and lazy. It feels like they wrote this movie around the gags and fun sequences the director had in mind. The first action sequence is Venom stopping some evil dog owners, does it tie to the plot? Nope. They have Eddie and Venom reunite with Mrs. Chen in Vegas and they dance, does that go anywhere? Nope. When you’re constructing a movie like that, that’s a bad sign and it simply doesn’t work. This franchise has always been goofy, there’s goofy scenes and scenarios in all of the movies. This one it seems like they wrote the script around the fun sequences, that’s lazy. There’s also so many subplots and characters that it pulls time away from what could have been a very interesting plot for this movie. The idea of doing a version of The Fugitive with Venom sounds good to me. That’s a simple plot line that can allow for a bunch of fun and wild sequences to take place. That’s not the case with this movie, there’s so much in here with the side characters that the stuff about Knull and the other symbiotes feel like they’re on the back burner. This was just a complete waste of Knull, they completely wasted Andy Serkis in this movie. They have him in the movie for like three minutes, just to deliver exposition. This movie had potential to be the best of the trilogy, if they focused the story more and trimmed things a bit, this easily could have been the best. But they made so many story mistakes that I have to put it last.
2. Venom: This is an interesting one, because this certainly isn’t a good movie but it’s an entertaining movie. Part of that weird charm of this movie, they’re able to get away with because this was the first movie. We didn’t have expectations set yet, they didn’t have to try and top the goofiness of the previous movie. There’s something just fun about this movie being very small scale. A lot of people have said this feels like a comic book B-movie. It’s a movie that’s not trying to be the biggest or the best comic book movie out there. There’s something fun about that, it’s not trying to be this movie with Earth ending stakes or anything like that, no it’s just trying to entertain and it does a decent enough job at that. I think this movie also features some of Venom’s best moments, part of that is probably due to it being the first so they had more creativity as to what they can do with Venom. The first sequence with him introduced, turns into a motorcycle chase. It's a fun sequence that’s fun to see Venom doing all of these crazy things. The final moments in the drug store with Eddie and Venom stopping the robber, does feature some of Venom’s best moments of this entire trilogy. There's a lot of fun to be had here, once again the plot and plot mechanics don’t fully add up for me. The logic of the movie makes no sense, Especially with the timeline of certain things if you stop and think about it, the plot raises a lot more questions then it should have. There’s a big time jump in this movie, but in this big time jump characters are still traveling to the destination they started in before the time jump, none of that stuff makes sense. Riz Ahmed is a great actor, he’s done great work elsewhere but he’s completely wasted in this movie. He’s not really given much to do, he’s just playing this evil rich business man that doesn’t get along with Eddie and then gets the symbiote randomly in the third act just so we can have a final boss battle with Venom. Like I said, this might not be a good movie. It certainly has its flaws, but there is some weird charm about this movie that does elevate it a bit, largely due to Tom Hardy’s performance.
1. Venom: Let There Be Carnage: To be perfectly clear, this was a pretty safe and easy placement at #1. I think this is easily the best of the Venom movies and that has all of the best elements of this trilogy. Part of the problem with the original film was that it took way too long for Eddie and Venom to get together, it’s almost half way through the movie before Venom is properly introduced. With this movie, Eddie and Venom are already together at the beginning of it so we can get that bromance between the two of them throughout the entire movie. If you don’t like that bromance, you might not like this movie as much. But if you like that bromance, this movie delivers more of the best aspects of the original movie. From there, Woody Harrelson as Cletus Kassidy, Carnage is the best villain of this trilogy. Both Cletus Cassidy and Carnage have a better rival with Eddie Brock and Venom. This movie establishes this relationship with Venom and Carnage, that maybe they could have developed a bit more. But they develop it just enough so you care about that rivalry. This movie is about these odd relationships, every character in this movie is somehow wrapped out in a wider relationship. Of course, there’s Eddie and Venom but there’s also Cletus and Carnage, Cletus and Shriek, Eddie and Anne. It’s this interesting movie because of that, because it’s exploring all of these weird and interesting characters and relationships they have with one another. Also, Andy Serkis is directing this movie and I think he provides the more creative directorial imprint on this movie. There’s several sequences that are treated as montages or a character reading a letter, but it’s done in a way that’s exciting and visually very cool. Also, this movie features the best mid/end credit scene of this entire trilogy. My audience went nuts watching this movie opening night, I wish they did more with it, but it’s still cool. This isn’t a fantastic movie, it still has it’s problems, the runtime should have been longer. But I think it’s a solid sequel that’s an example of a sequel that surpasses the original. I’m not ranking this as one of the best comic book movies of all time, but it’s a solid film.
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