Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

3/10

 

Starring          

Tom Hardy

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Juno Temple

Rhys Ifans

 

Directed by Kelly Marcel

 

There is something about the CGI used in these Venom movies that just doesn’t sit well with me. It’s so chunky, especially when Eddie is in Venom mode, that it feels out of place. Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things when it comes to the fans of the franchise. This movie doesn’t stand out as an amazing addition to the whole Spider-verse. I wasn’t moved or intrigued by what was happening, and the attempt to make the ending emotional didn’t work. It felt like the same old superhero movie formula, where no character's story is ever truly over.

Venom: The Last Dance is supposed to be the final movie in the Venom trilogy by Sony, though I use "supposed" loosely because nothing really ends anymore. Like its predecessors, Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), this film follows Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his symbiote Venom on their adventures. This time, we begin in a bar in Mexico, where Eddie is on the run for the death of Patrick Mulligan. However, we know from the last movie that Mulligan’s death has nothing to do with Eddie/Venom.

We’re then introduced to a new character, Knull, a being who, according to the symbiotes, existed before the creation of the universe. He’s awakened because Venom, at one point, brought Eddie back to life, creating something called a codex. This codex alerts Knull because, with it, he can escape from the prison that the symbiotes have locked him in. To do so, he sends creatures called Xenophages to find this codex.

There are a lot of holes in this story, but honestly, I’m not interested enough to dive into them. Meanwhile, in Area 51, Strickland and his team have been collecting symbiotes and any traces of them. We meet Dr. Teddy Payne, who’s been studying these symbiotes to understand their origins and intentions. From this research, they discover that Knull has awakened, and the only way to stop him is to kill either Venom or Eddie.

Here’s where the movie loses me, in order to save Venom, the number of deaths is staggering. Also, the amount of symbiotes who sacrifice their lives in a situation that, in the end, accomplishes nothing it felt like a waste. To me, all these deaths were pointless. How the writers allowed the movie to end the way it did, with the amount of dead symbiotes and characters is marveling.

I know Sony will hold on to the Spider-verse for a long time, which means we’ll continue to see these half-baked sequels and spinoffs being released again and again.