Venom: The Last Dance directed by Kelly Marcel, is the final installment in Sony’s Venom trilogy. When the first trailer for this movie dropped, I was very skeptical and frankly un-interested. However, as early reviews dropped in my hopes began to rise. Unfortunately, I’m here to say that these early reviews grossly overrated this movie as I believe it is definitely the worst in the franchise.
Starting with the special effects, they were easily the best part of this movie. However, they didn’t quite step up to the level of the past two for me. The effects of this movie seemed to be dumbed down for the budget. For a movie that serves as our farewell to the character, Venom doesn’t really have a lot of significant appearances in this movie (except for a random dance sequence). It’s pretty much baked into the plot that he can’t fully transform for a majority of the movie, so we only see Venom in full form for about 10 minutes of screen time and aside from some cool action scenes, they aren’t used very well. That being said, the designs of the other symbiotes in this movie were actually very cool and I really enjoyed their variation. They also had some cool unique fight scenes, but we didn’t see enough of them in the end to build up any stakes.
The emotional beats of this movie are present but could be stronger. I do really enjoy Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock in these movies, as well as the Venom symbiote. Their chemistry and bond are really unique and funny, and for me, it is what saved the previous two movies. This movie tries to find a way to end this bond naturally and close out the story, and there are definitely hints of success in this movie. There are some scenes in this that pack a larger emotional weight than anything from the first two, however, they are overshadowed by all the other things this movie is trying to pack in. I think this movie would have benefited from a longer runtime or reduction of some other B plots in order to really stress the strength of Eddie and Venom’s bond and the finality of this movie.
Humor was definitely a larger part of this movie than the previous two, but I’m not so sure that was a good thing. If you enjoyed the sequence from the second movie where Venom attended a rave and did some goofy things, then you will enjoy a large portion of this movie. If this was the vibe they were going for in the movie I think it could have worked with the right script. That being said, this movie is consistently undergoing a major identity crisis. It struggles to decide if it’s a campy superhero comedy or a serious conclusion to this franchise with real emotional beats. This results in some messy storytelling that often steps on its own toes tonally.
In the end, this movie actually fell short of what I thought was possible for this franchise. There’s so much promise with these characters and the bond between them, and yet consistently Sony seems to fumble the ball. I would give this movie a 1 out of 5. If you are a fan of this franchise, I would say you should see it just to see the conclusion of this character, but I don’t think this is a necessary theater watch, and you could probably just wait until it inevitably gets a streaming release.
