“Venom: The Last Dance” is the final installment in the Venom trilogy and the farewell (for now) to the Venom character. This movie is the newest addition to the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, following the release of “Madame Web” in February. The movies in this franchise have not been well received by critics and have received mixed reviews from audiences. “Venom: The Last Dance” hopes to be the first definitive success of the series.
To start with the good parts of the movie, the special effects are well done throughout. The movie also utilizes the Venom powers in a way other movies have not, which gives the audience interesting scenes and ideas. The movie does not overstay it’s welcome clocking in at a 90 minute runtime. There are a few funny bits and jokes in the movie, especially in the casino segment. The credits, which are essentially a slideshow of different “venomized” animals, are cool. The movie has enough good elements, and it maintains a consistent level of quality throughout.
However, the bad parts of the movie match the good and possibly even outweigh them. None of the characters or the relationships in the movie are interesting or engaging, with the exception of the relationship between Eddie and Venom, which is fine at best. Every secondary character is poorly written and poorly acted out. The main villain, Knull, never leaves his one location and the heroes of the movie never interact with him at all. The heroes instead interact with Knull’s underling monsters. This robs the movie of any momentum as it starts and ends with Venom and Eddie trying to defeat a low tier enemy. It also renders the movie insignificant as we, the audience, know Knull has not been defeated. The movie does not seem to escalate towards a battle with him either, making an even worse version of the same mistake “Justice League” made. Actor Tom Hardy mumbles a lot in his portrayal of the character Eddie Brock, making him hard to understand. This problem is equally present in Venom, who speaks slightly more clearly, but does not usually have mouth movements to make him easier to understand. The entire scene in the casino seems to be purely motivated by a desire for shots to put in the trailer. The casino scene’s goals could also be to include jokes and to put Mrs. Chen (the shopkeeper from the previous two Venom movies) in the movie. However, I do not think there are any good reasons for Mrs. Chen to be in the movie.
Some people will say I was too harsh on this movie since the Venom movies are not supposed to be taken seriously; They are meant to be dumb fun. While that may be true to an extent, this movie wants to be taken seriously at times, and it falls on its face every time it does. This movie does not commit to being dumb well enough for me to consider it simply dumb fun, and it does not do well enough at being serious for me to take it seriously. The movie sits too much on the fence and as a result is the worst of both worlds.
Taking this all into account, “Venom: The Last Dance” is the best movie in the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters by default. It is not great and it is not terrible. It feels like a superhero movie from the early 2000s with some modern pitfalls and some of the benefits of the modern superhero era. If you enjoyed the previous Venom movies, you will like this one. To the average audience member, this is just another entry in a long line of underwhelming “Spider-Man-less Spider-Man” movies from Sony.
Special effects are done well throughout “Venom: The Last Dance.”
