REVIEW: Venom: The Last Dance
Venom and Eddie Brock return for one last film (for now) in Venom: The Last Dance which is now playing in theaters.
The film is directed by Kelly Marcel and stars Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans and Chiwetel Ejiofor from Sony Pictures and distributed locally by Columbia Pictures.
The weird couple of Eddie Brock and Venom return for their final outing and I have to say that it’s sad to see them go but it’s also weird to watch. I had fun watching this film but there are certain elements that could have been done better, executed better, written better et al. Bottom line, the finished product wasn’t polished or could have been workshopped a little further.
I initially liked the tease of Knull aka the King in Black being the film’s true villain but he was a glorified cameo. The film wanted to make you think hard on who the antagonists were. Was it Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Strickland? Was it the Xenophages, clearly not because those were action sequence fodder. Was it the relationship between Eddie and Venom? Until the credits rolled I was left wondering who was it. And it suckes that for a standard popcorn-muncher film, it was never fully fleshed out.
The action scenes and set pieces were really fun to watch. That venomized horse sequence and the succeeding river scene was riveting.
The humor was hit or miss here. Even when they call in for reinforcements from long-running goof character Mrs Chen plus we got that extended dancing scene to the tune of ABBA, its still not working fully for me. Even what should have been funny bits about Venom hitting people started to grow stale pretty fast.
Tom Hardy stars as Eddie Brock/Venom in Columbia Pictures VENOM: THE LAST DANCE.
What’s really great for me here is the continued development of the relationship between Venom and Eddie. We still get a mesmerizing performance by Tom Hardy. The writing and the performance really shines in this bit and you get this wee bit connection between the two. Sadly it’s not enough to power through a number of flaws for the film.
Another good news is that the film successfully introduces a bunch of new symbiote characters including Mulligan’s Toxin who was briefly hinted in the second Venom film, Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Alas that didn’t last long for a bunch of reasons I do not want to disclose because of spoilers. But the fact that they are now willing to give other characters a go was such a sigh of relief. Hope they can do the same for the upcoming flick Kraven the Hunter.
The side characters weren’t that interesting for me. Well, except for one of Rhys Ifans’ kids, that’s totally me in this situation. Yes I am totally aware that they added in two past actors who played other Marvel characters for this film namely Chiwetel Ejiofor who was previously (and still is I guess) Baron Mordo from the Doctor Strange movies and Rhys Ifans who we last saw as Lizard in “No Way Home” and “Amazing Spider-Man”. Ifans was OK as this hippie dad that wanted to go to Area 51 and Ejiofor’s Strickland was a hard-assed military type who wants to rid the world of symbiotes. But yeah, writing’s pretty weak. They did get their moments though just like Juno Temple’s character.
It’s also a bummer that we got some new symbiote characters but then again they get iced in the action sequence.
Venom: The Last Dance’s story was really weirdly paced and confusing at times especially when we talk about the level of how they reference Knull the creator of the symbiotes. But the even weird part is that it feels like the best movie they’ve come up with for the entire franchise. You’ve got a lot of new characters, character developments, some serious worldbuilding and teasing, developing a solid lore and even being able to chip off established lore and weaving some new takes. Eddie
