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Review: ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ Delivers a Fitting End for Its Titular Antihero, Despite Being a Reminder of the Series’ Many Shortcomings
October 24, 2024Ben MK
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One of the true dark horses of modern superhero cinema, the Venom movies have defied the odds. However, when your benchmarks are films like Madame Web and Morbius, it's a low bar to clear to emerge as the best Spider-Man spin-off. With 2018's Venom and 2021's Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Tom Hardy's performance as the Lethal Protector has given audiences some of the most guilty-pleasure movie moments this side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And now, with Venom: The Last Dance, Hardy is back to finish what he started, in this third and final franchise entry that proves you can never keep an alien symbiote down — especially when the fate of our planet hangs in the balance. Set in the immediate aftermath of the events of Let There Be Carnage, The Last Dance finds exhausted former journalist Eddie Brock (Hardy) a wanted man. Accused in the death of San Francisco police detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham), who was left for dead at the hands of Carnage (Woody Harrelson) and his partner, Shriek (Naomie Harris), Eddie is forced to lay low in Mexico, where he and his best friend, Venom, have been biding their time frequenting tequila bars and biting the heads off unsavory criminals. It's not long, though, before a new threat — in the form of a mysterious villain named Knull (Andy Serkis) — rears its ugly head. And when Knull, who also happens to have been betrayed and imprisoned by Venom and his fellow symbiotes, senses a way that he can finally escape from his eternal damnation on the planet Klyntar, he dispatches his army of monstrous symbiote hunters called xenophages to track down Venom — a feat made possible thanks to a unique codex that only manifests when Venom and Eddie combine to unleash their full might. Meanwhile, in Nevada, miles beneath the soon-to-be-decommissioned U.S. military base known as Area 51, the scientists and soldiers belonging to a top-secret program called Imperium have been hard at work rounding up symbiotes and studying them, in an effort to harness their terrifying potential and use them for military purposes. Led by the hard-nosed General Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and compassionate head scientist Dr. Payne (Juno Temple), they've managed to capture almost all of the symbiotes that originally crash-landed on Earth at the beginning of the first film. Little do they realize, however, that they themselves are about to be caught in the middle of a vicious conflict between the xenophages and the symbiotes. And when Knull's forces invade Area 51, waging war on anyone in their path, it's up to Venom and his alien brothers and sisters to save the day — a mission that may require some of them to make the ultimate sacrifice, in order to stop Knull from breaking free from his prison and wreaking bloody havoc on Earth and the rest of the universe. Written and directed by Kelly Marcel, what follows is a marginal step up from its predecessor, although The Last Dance never fully succeeds at delivering an adventure worthy of its titlular antihero. Whether it's the awkwardly written dialogue, the wildly inconsistent pacing, or simply the way this sequel feels like a movie made in the early 2000s, viewers who bemoaned the first two films' maniacal symbiosis of action, comedy and bromance will find similar things to complain about this time around. Still, when it comes to serving up an action-packed finale that does reasonable justice to Venom's character arc, the third time proves to be a charm, with the result opening up the fan service floodgates and giving viewers what they've been clamoring six years to see. That said, anyone who dares to compare Venom: The Last Dance with other threequels like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine are in for a world of disappointment, as this closing entry in the series also functions as a reminder of what could have been and the missed opportunities along the way. Nonetheless, for those in the mood for a comic book reinterpretation of Independence Day with a dash of Mission: Impossible-inspired stunts thrown in for good measure, there are far worse ways this could have ended. Venom: The Last Dance releases October 25th, 2024 from Sony Pictures. The film has an MPAA rating of PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images and strong language. Its runtime is 1 hr. 49 min. |
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