Main cast: Tom Hardy (Eddie Brock/Venom), Chiwetel Ejiofor (General Rex Strickland), Juno Temple (Dr Teddy Paine), Rhys Ifans (Martin Moon), Stephen Graham (Patrick Mulligan), Peggy Lu (Mrs Chen), Clark Backo (Sadie Christmas), Alanna Ubach (Nova Moon), Cristo Fernández (The Barman), Jared Abrahamson (Captain Forrest), Hala Finley (Echo), and Dash McCloud (Leaf)
Director: Kelly Marcel
Remember when they said that Venom is supposed to be a dark and adult anti-hero movie?
Well, somehow that thing spawned an actual trilogy, and unsurprisingly, Venom: The Last Dance is an unnecessary and big dumb thing that only exists to make money. This time around, they try so hard to turn the symbiote into cute-ugly things like symbiote doggies and other cute craps that seem designed just to sell toys. There is no edge, nothing. It’s just a movie that is made to make things explode on the screen.
Remember how Eddie made a cameo in a post-credit scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home? Well, that scene is pointless, and here, Eddie is back to his own section of the blasted multiverse, so that particular scene went nowhere.
Anyway, now Eddie finds himself pursued by the cops for the murder of Patrick Mulligan, and he sets out to clear his name. Meanwhile, some Papa Symbiote thing called the Xenophage is after Eddie and his symbiote, and General Rex Strickland from the Area 51 gang is now after the Xenophage. Maybe Eddie and his symbiote too, I don’t know and I don’t care because the recapping the plot is already hurting my head. Meanwhile, Mulligan is still alive, in Area 51, where he bonds with Dr Teddy Paine and her assistant Sadie Christmas.
Oh, and the Papa of all Symbiote Papas, Krull, wants to retrieve something called the Codex that is formed when Eddie was resurrected by Venom, and somehow this Codex will…
Okay, I can do this. The script is basically A goes to B leads to C and then D just happens and so on. Basically, this movie is a montage of scenes that exists solely to facilitate chases, explosions, and woo just one long session of jangling keychains, all the while Eddie is unable to transform to Venom because of plot and maybe because they have slashed the CGI budget to pieces.
Throughout it all, the movie is just Eddie walking from one place to another, reacting to either lame action scenes or super cringe “humor”.
If anything, the character of Eddie is completely reduced to being a dumb meathead and they don’t even pretend that he’s supposed to be a hotshot journalist anymore. Maybe his brain has been damaged from having to dealing with Venom 24/7? Meanwhile, there are dumb gags like Eddie keep losing his shoes, Venom doing dumb things meant to be cute like dancing with old women, and other things that just don’t matter at all.
Also, what is Juno Temple doing her? The movie builds up her character’s back story a bit, but that character doesn’t matter at all in the long run. Are they trying to set Dr Teddy Paine to have a spinoff of her own? After Madam Web, I don’t know why Sony keeps bothering to try.
This movie is stupid. It feels random. Scenes take place without any rhyme or reason, everything is dumb, and the movie rolls out tired and done-to-death clichés like misuse of old music, slow motion, and really cringe attempt to emulate MCU humor. It’s just so, so, so mind-numbingly dumb that everyone involved in it should feel so embarrassed for inflicting it onto the general public… oh wait, this movie made a lot of money?
Okay, scratch that. Nuke this world please. It’s beyond saving.
