Venom: The Last Dance Review: Semi-Interesting Adventure with Original Aspects

Cast: Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rhys Ifans, Peggy Lu, Alanna Ubach, Stephen Graham, Clark Backo, Andy Serkis

Director: Kelly Marcel

Where to Watch: In Theaters

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three stars)

Venom: The Last Dance arrives on our screens, loaded with very few expectations, at least for those who have seen the deterioration of the saga, after the first, sparkling and a bit of a joker stand-alone, which was able to dominate the world box office amid the Covid19 pandemic. Tom Hardy in this third and final episode is not enough to save an inconsistent film, also lacking genuine anarchy that could make it, if nothing else, a minimally sensible cinematic experience. Venom: The Last Dance immediately reconfirms the playful and chaotic verve that had distinguished the first two films of this cinematic tale, making us find the two main protagonists, this time hunted, and taking advantage of this to transpose their ways and attitudes along a journey that is romantic and dramatic, in its presentation to the audience at the cinema. Don’t get me wrong, though: here we are not talking about love in the conventional sense, but about the bond, even toxic, symbiotic indeed, between two entities that have never truly found their own balance in life.

There is a connection, however, and it is in this that the entire narrative of Kelly Marcel’s first film as director moves, which also includes a rather simple story in its development, quite hastily put together and hasty in some ways, and not too incisive outside of the bond between Eddie and Venom. As anticipated, Venom: The Last Dance fails to convince itself again, stuffing the entire narrative with quite random ideas, framed by a writing that never really knows how to find its own direction, except in the final part. The nonsense and the suspension of the epic return, but random and, in some moments, quite repetitive; the stereotyped characters return with, in this case, poorly hidden “explanations”, a certain type of writing that, in addition to trying to get a few laughs, unfortunately, fails to do more.

Venom: The Last Dance Review: The Last Words

“Venom: The Last Dance” picks up after the events of “Spider-Man: No Way Home”, with Eddie Brook (Tom Hardy) and his symbiote who have taken refuge in Mexico, trying to be as invisible as possible, but without a real perspective, without a goal, in short: they live day by day, drowning in alcohol the imbalances of their strange coexistence. However, from the depths of the universe, a terrifying danger lurks Knull (Andy Serkis), a dark and terrible deity, the one who created the symbiotes themselves and was finally imprisoned by them. Now he plans to free himself, to return to spread terror and destruction throughout the entire universe, but to do so he needs Venom, or rather what Venom and Eddie are together: a sort of key to unleash his terrifying power. At the same time, in Area 51, Colonel Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) are carrying out a top-secret research project, observing the other symbiotes that have arrived on Earth, trying to understand their characteristics and, above all, why they are among themselves.

But when Knull sends his terrifying emissaries to look for Eddie, everything changes and soon the former reporter and the childish shape-shifting alien will find themselves faced with very difficult choices. “Venom: The Last Dance” is written and directed, like the previous two, by Kelly Marcel, in her first directorial role after having written the script for the other two episodes and titles such as “Cruella” and “50 Shades of Grey”. This already makes it clear how little Columbia, Marvel, and Sony believed in this project, which from the first to the last minute seems like one of those made by force and not by will. The first Venom was a real surprise, in hindsight a completely different cinecomic from those of Marvel, a gem that recovered much of what the genre was in the early 2000s, and therefore a perfect product for the millennial generation. But its authenticity had already been put to the test by the sequel, in which despite the presence of Woody Harrelson, all the vitality, unpredictability, as well as the total absence of a minimum of political correctness, had been substantially denied. “Venom: The Last Dance” unfortunately does the same. It is made even worse, it is one of the barest comics in terms of narrative, pace, and atmosphere that have been seen.

Venom: The Last Dance opens with the previously seen scene in which Eddie (Tom Hardy) finds himself in a reality different from his own, trying to understand the reasons while getting drunk. This “narrative gimmick”, however, dies immediately when we see him immediately return to his world, making clear the end of an option that perhaps was never really such. We then return to the present that we all know and to the vicissitudes that involved the protagonist in the previous films. It seems that the clash with Carnage has had direct consequences, bringing Eddie‘s face to all the news due to an investigation against him. Hunted by US law enforcement, Brock has no choice but to look for a place to hide, a refuge that will keep him safe from prying eyes, so that no one can arrest him or accuse him of anything further. The idea that ignites the events of Venom: The Last Dance therefore becomes that of heading from Mexico to New York.

The Big Apple becomes a symbol of salvation (welcoming all those looking for a place to go, playing with the migratory nature of the symbiote itself) for Eddie and Venom, convinced that there they could not only manage to escape but also try to build something. In the darkness of a world far from the facts we know, an ancient and powerful entity named Knull, the one who seems to have given life and form to the symbiotes themselves long ago longs to escape from the prison in which he was locked up following the betrayal of his children. To do so he needs an object called Codex, curiously in the possession of Eddie himself, and decides to unleash into the universe some bestial beings capable of identifying what he needs to gain his freedom. So Venom: The Last Dance turns into a crazy journey with unexpected nuances. On one side, two fugitives without a real plan for their survival, and on the other, an alien entity hungry for freedom and very ancient. If we add to the game a top-secret section of the American army, which specializes in the capture and study of the symbiotes found on the planet, the game is done.

Venom: The Last Dance Review and Analysis

The first thing that catches the eye when watching Venom: The Last Dance is its writing and that introductory nature that is never completely resolved in the course of events, leaving some circumstances hanging that seem to refer to the future, or at least to any elsewhere that is uncertain for now. The work done in terms of characterization in general, for example, is never incisive in its presentation to the audience in the theater, preferring to present a handful of characters, both positive and negative, who inevitably remain suspended for no apparent reason. Such a creative approach never finds direct justification, resulting in a feature film that concentrates all its entertainment potential on the two main characters and some pretty good action sequences. For the rest, however, Venom: The Last Dance never goes into depth, preferring to adopt a narrative approach that is always on the surface, reworking a series of “explanations” and narrative stereotypes that remain such from beginning to end, precisely because you never go beyond the little that you see on the screen.

This applies to both the positive characters, of which we have only a few hints, in some cases little or nothing, and to the main villain, this infamous Knull, who appears more as a secondary presence than anything else. A choice like this seems to change the very nature of Venom: The Last Dance and what it could represent with a title like this, perhaps aiming for an uncertain future for a franchise that has never been entirely incisive. So many things are completely random and rather irrelevant as the journey at the center of the film unfolds. Venom: The Last Dance looks in this case to an exaggeration, visual and action, rather noisy and an end in itself, never fully in-depth and full of moments (which we will not spoil), even senseless, that is a waste of time, lengthening a story that could easily have been shorter. There is no narrative cohesion in the film signed by Kelly Marcel, but rather an attempt to structure this romantic comedy with dramatic traits, shaping its attitudes through the most typical elements of superhero films that take themselves very seriously.

If some choices are quite random, it is precisely in the final resolution that Venom: The Last Dance does its best to close the circle, confusing the audience. Hence the uncertainty about the very nature of this project and about some specific choices in terms of narration and explanation, deepening and understanding, together with a film that does not convince, if not for some over-the-top ideas and a particular underlying sentimentalism. “Venom: The Last Dance” tries in every way to connect to a melancholic atmosphere, even more connected to the genre of science fiction, horror. There are several references to the cinematography of David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, and even Sam Raimi, to name a few. However, Marcel’s film is weighed down by an atrocious script, which inserts passages that are gratuitous and devoid of a minimum of sense, above all the choice to include the hippie family of Martin Moon (Rhys Ifans) that although consistent with the desire to talk to us about the existential and sentimental loneliness of the protagonist, in a very short time turns out to be a significant ball and chain.

Tom Hardy has objectively been flabby since 2020, he is not aging very well either physically or artistically, but he still manages to give some of his isolated paws, when he is left a little freer, like when he proposes himself for a few moments in a Casino under the elegant guise of a wannabe James Bond, parodying the rumors that for a long time had seen him as one of the possible candidates to collect Daniel Craig’s legacy as 007. But it is only one of the few moments of brio, in which his verve travels with a minimum of sense, while “Ocean’s Eleven”, “Rain Man”, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, “X-Files” and much more are cited. However, they are all poorly harmonized, there is no common thread, and above all a shoulder at the height of it or a villain is missing, we are far from the pop perfection of “Deadpool & Wolverine”. Yes, because “Venom: The Last Dance” is ultimately worse than the second episode, which was so exaggerated, gargantuan, ridiculous, but at the same time so vintage and retro in its homage to the teenagers of the past, those who began to see comic book movies at the dawn of the 21st century, that it completely failed to bring them any harm.

Here instead there is a bit of violence, a couple of good action sequences, and the usual attempt to create a handover to the female world (you know what’s new) but it lacks a real idea, a soul. But even more so its irony is often tiring, and empty, like its protagonist, like Tom Hardy precisely, a great actor but who in recent times has completely lost himself behind rather stale projects. “Venom: The Last Dance” is yet another horror of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, a cinematic universe now dead. Soon “Kraven the Hunter” will be released which has everything to be another flop, yet another cinematic crime that makes this project one of the most colossal failures in the history of modern cinema, not just of cinecomics. The breaking point is a giant extraterrestrial killer lizard that hunts symbiotes, unleashed by the big boss and creator of the entities, Knull, to track down and capture Venom. Among the earthlings, however, the most significant threat to the couple comes from General Strickland (Ejiofor), who works in the basement of Area 51 and has a big problem with the very idea of ​​extraterrestrial life.

In the reassuring geometry of Kelly Marcel’s screenplay, alongside the protagonists, there are the scientist with a cumbersome past Dr. Payne (Temple), her colleague “Christmas” (Clark Backo), and a family of friendly hippies, led by dad Ifans, who reaches Area 51 in the hope of discovering the truth about the extraterrestrial presence on Earth. At a basic level of structure, Venom: The Last Dance is a reassuring, frenetic, and pyrotechnic confrontation between Good and Evil encapsulated in the story of a special friendship. Each character is given a clear moral position to balance the ambiguity of the Eddie-symbiote duo, predators, and protectors much more complex than a hasty and superficial reading of their relationship would suggest. They must decide what to do with their destiny and, superficially, Venom: The Last Dance, with its flavor of inevitability and without the worry of defining mythology already drawn by the first two films, would have the credentials to calibrate an interesting cocktail of sentiment, action, science fiction, humor and the shadow of a tear.

Instead, everything or almost everything that would be needed to give the film depth, credibility, and coherence is missing. If there is a story, it does not know what its horizon is. It stops at the premises, without giving depth and a reasoned sense to the ideas of the first part, solving the knots of a barely outlined plot in an inconsistent and poorly focused ending. The characterization of the supporting actors suffers, used to the bare minimum of their possibilities, and with interpreters of the caliber of Ejiofor and Temple it is a real shame, perhaps not mortal but deserving of a serious reprimand. The action suffers, devoid of originality and the feeling of a great, vibrant, show. The story, the portrait of a special friendship, suffers. Marcel and Hardy show that they know the character, his limits, and his strengths, but they do not have clear ideas on what to do with him, after the success of the first two films, in terms of development and possible conclusion of the journey.

Venom: The Last Dance Review: The Last Words

Venom: The Last Dance is, in our opinion, the best film of the trilogy. This, without a shadow of a doubt, is due to the demerits of the other two chapters that make this last one not a good film, but definitely better than the previous ones. Net of many (and also in this case too many) banalities in the script, the film gives us a semi-interesting adventure with original aspects. Venom bids farewell to the public with a third film that adds a bit of melancholy to the light-hearted tone of its two predecessors, well conveyed by Tom Hardy’s dual performance. Looking at the main developments, it is quite clear where Venom: The Last Dance wants to go. The most direct problems, in terms of writing and characterization, however, tend to obscure even the funniest ideas of a film with a rather botched identity. In the chaos of a journey without too many certainties, some forces and ideas move that remain on the surface of a story that is never completely detailed, but only introduced, in a work that plays with sentimentality and action elements without going beyond.

Venom: The Last Dance Review: Semi-Interesting Adventure with Original Aspects - Filmyhype

Director: Kelly Marcel

Date Created: 2024-10-24 17:58

Editor's Rating:
3

Pros

• Tom Hardy is doubly amazing
• The film, in its own way, keeps the promises of the title.
• The special effects have improved once again
• Some ideas and entertaining moments.
• Tom Hardy's performance is still good even if more tired than usual.

Cons

• Knull is a bit of a throwaway
• Anyone who isn't a fan of the first two films will hardly change their mind with this episode.
• The writing is botched and superficial.
• Characterization in general always remains on the surface.
• Some pretty random sequences, developments and jokes.