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Venom: The Last Dance

Young Critic

Updated: Nov 3, 2024

The final film in the trilogy falls completely flat



Super-hero fatigue has been noted by movie studios. As a result, output has significantly been scaled back as Disney’s MCU had just one theatrical release this year (Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)) and DC reboots its own universe, with its unaffiliated Joker: Folie a Deux (2024) marking their only entry this year. Sony, meanwhile, has tried squeezing what it can from its Marvel properties affiliated with Spider-Man. Yet, the Japanese studio has struggled with consistency in its film slate.

 

Venom: The Last Dance (2024) is the capstone to the unlikely trilogy of Venom films. We find symbiote-infected Eddie Brock/Venom (Tom Hardy) on the run in Mexico, when menacing creatures from Venom’s home world arrive with an ancient grudge. Upon Eddie’s escapades, he bumps into Area 51 personnel, such as General Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Dr. Payne (Juno Temple), who seek to corral and study symbiotes.

 

Venom: The Last Dance is the directorial debut of screenwriter Kelly Marcel. Her writing record has been mixed, penning the enjoyable Saving Mr. Banks (2013) and Cruella (2021), but also serving to adapt Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) and the previous Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021).

 

The Last Dance is a film so predictable, bland, and forgettable that calling it “written by AI” is insulting to generative intelligence. The plot seems to have been concocted with a cool idea for a final battle. However, the resulting story building up to this finale is rife with lazy detours, contradictory lore, and the most blatant filler since “The Fly” episode in Breaking Bad (2008-2013). The dialogue is entirely expository; there isn’t a single moment of authenticity or attempt at character exploration. Even the humor, usually a saving grace for this franchise, is shoddily crafted, falling flat. Even the finale that The Last Dance has been crafted around, is a let-down, filled with incoherent shaky-cam, dark CGI use, and missed easy fan-service.

 

Hardy has been a vocal advocate for this character from the first film, which he helped greenlight. His performances have always been dedicated, infusing physical comedy to his character’s dichotomy. In the Last Dance, he’s joined by an array of great, yet none of them could have saved this film. Not even the great Rhys Ifans, as a UFO fan, can deliver the embarrassing dialogue with a straight face. The cast is absolutely abandoned to its devices, acting a story so bareboned, not even a parody would use.

Sony has struggled to tell any semblance of a consistent story within its Spider-Man properties. Venom was a bland, cookie-cutter film, with its sequel Let There Be Carnage proving a frustrating missed opportunity. The likes of Morbius (2022) and Madam Web (2024) have become the laughingstock of the film community, and there is little confidence in the upcoming Kraven the Hunter (2024). All this indicates a studio, who pushed for more Venom content, as the only character that brought money at the box office. However, it is evident that there was no narrative justification for this film. The result is a farewell for this character that will hopefully make Sony emulate its fellow studios, and give its blockbuster strategy a rethink.

3.0/10

Opmerkingen


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