Synopsis:
In Venom: The Last Dance, Tom Hardy returns as Venom, one of Marvel’s greatest and most complex characters, for the final film in the trilogy. Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.
What We Thought
The Venom movies aren’t great. I don’t blame Tom Hardy or even the filmmakers for that. The biggest issue is that Sony doesn’t own the rights to the characters needed to make the franchise good. Venom: The Last Dance is the final film in the trilogy and might be the best of the three. It’s at least the best film since the first one if it’s not the best of the series.
Tom Hardy returns as Eddie Brock who’s on the run with his alien Symbiote friend Venom after the events of the second film. While on the run he and Venom decide they need to get to New York City where someone there might be able to help clear Eddie’s name. The first half of the film is pretty much a buddy road trip comedy with Eddie and Venom traveling on a plane, a horse and automobile when they meet a nice family heading to Area 51 to find aliens! Along the way they learn that there are creatures out hunting them as is a group of super soldiers. There is some backstory on the bad guy and his MacGuffin plot device that Venom knows about and Eddie is clueless about.
They make their way to Las Vegas where the second half kicks in. There the chaos ensues with Eddie and Venom dealing with the soldiers, a secret experimental project of Area 51 and the alien creatures. I preferred this part of the movie. There are genuine stakes involved and some emotional scenes at the end. Plus we get to see more Symbiote action and get teased about another group of anti-hero/anti-villains that have yet to make their theatrical debut. There’s isn’t a payoff for that though. I think the film ends the trilogy well with this section and the dynamic of Eddie and Venom.
Unfortunately Venom: The Last Dance suffers from a very generic villain. Knull in the comics is associated with Venom and Carnage and is the creator of the Symbiotes, but he’s also associated with Thor, The Silver Surfer, Gorr The God Butcher and more Marvel characters that Sony can’t bring in. He’s a powerful god-like villain who is completely wasted in the film shown as nothing more than a space creature using other monsters to do his wishes. He could be a Thanos, Galactus, or Kang level superbad whose powers outrank Thanos, but instead he’s a one and done bad guy misused in a single film.
Fans of the Venom movies will probably enjoy Venom: The Last Dance, but I want so much more from the anti-hero. Hardy does his best and the crowd laughed at all the jokes, but the Venom character deserves more. I don’t know if Venom will ever find his way into the MCU, but if he does I hope he gets treated better there.
The Nerds Templar 