Movie Reviews
Venom: The Last Dance (Movie Review)
Have you ever heard of “Middle Book Syndrome”? For those who haven’t heard of it, this phrase accompanies complaints that the installment had no point: nothing happened, the characters went in circles, and the plot only served to get to the third book. Well, Venom: The Last Dance manages to get this syndrome while being the final film in this trilogy. And that’s not a good start to a review of a character that I love in comic books and other media.
Title: Venom: The Last Dance
Production Company: Columbia Pictures, Marvel Entertainment, Arad Productions, Matt Tolmach Productions, Pascal Pictures, Hutch Parker Entertainment, and Hardy Son & Baker
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Releasing
Directed by: Kelly Marcel
Produced by: Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, Amy Pascal, Kelly Marcel, Tom Hardy, and Hutch Parker
Written by: Tom Hardy & Kelly Marcel
Starring: Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, Clark Backo, and Alanna Ubach
Based on: Venom by Todd MacFarlane & Marvel Comics
Release dates: October 25, 2024
Running time: 109 minutes
Rating: PG
From The Void…
Venom: The Last Dance Story Summary – SPOILERS
Story Review – Some Vague Spoilers
This is the third time I’ve reviewed a Venom movie, with the first movie being favorable for an origin film, then the follow-up of Venom: Let There Be Carnage saw a slight dip on the Venom side of things, only to be saved by the Carnage side of things. Walking out of Venom: The Last Dance… I felt nothing. All I could think while watching Venom go from Horror/Action film to Comedy was this clip from The Godfather III:
I felt like they just took what should have been one of the most violent, aggressive, action-packed characters in comic books and turned him into a bickering married couple who just wanted to do anything except admit their relationship failed and divorce.
There was a movie at some point, with the vague idea of a story. Adapting the beginning to “The King in Black”, while not my favorite Venom event storyline, is at least something that a movie should be able to do well on the big screen. However, the story just feels like bookends to something else that was shoved into the middle of the film to remind us that Symbiotes are a thing and have something to do with Venom… Who is off to the side bickering with Eddie while they make their way to the B plot while avoiding the A plot as much as possible… Then have a side trip to one of the most out there non-sensical “why the fuck are they doing this” moments in film history.
Venom: The Last Dance Partners.
- Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock / Venom:
Where I once praised Tom Hardy for being the voice of Venom as well as the actor for Eddie, by the time I was halfway through Venom: The Last Dance I was begging for it all to end. What started as “Eddie goes crazy” had become a bickering married couple, and not in a funny way. Eddie spends the majority of the film complaining. Then in the final moments, instead of connecting and feeling sad about Venom, I was almost glad because it meant the movie was almost over… and so did others as people started clapping as if it was the end of the movie. - Chiwetel Ejiofor as Rex Strickland:
Typical Military guy who goes power mad as he just wants to defend the world against the evil aliens who are invading and you can’t change my mind. When he does get that power, it instantly backfires on him and everything goes crazy, leading to a last-minute trust of the aliens and doing one thing to save everyone from the threat in the end. Very trope-style in acting and character. - Juno Temple as Dr. Teddy Payne & Clark Backo as Sadie Christmas:
I sum these two up as “Dr. Inclusion” and “Dr. Diversity”. They are two scientists, one of which has a “dead” arm due to a lightning strike hitting her shoulder (Dr. Payne), and the other who wears a Christmas Tree pin all the time because her last name is Christmas (It’s a joke… GET IT?!). Both of them spend most of their time looking longingly at the captured symbiotes like they want to make out with them and say that the symbiotes are good creatures who are running from something. They do get their wishes of being covered by symbiotes in the last act of the film, with Dr Payne getting to keep her symbiote (who doesn’t have a name, none of them do), while Christmas loses hers in battle. Meh. - Stephen Graham as Patrick Mulligan:
If you don’t remember Mulligan from Venom: Let There Be Carnage, then I don’t blame you. The scientists infect him with one of the symbiotes in order to keep him alive and use his body to communicate with the symbiote. He adds nothing to the plot except to give all the women who want to fuck something that looks like a monster a thing to get wet over. - Peggy Lu as Mrs. Chen:
She’s back in one of the most pointless cameos ever. I’m sure she was included because someone writing this shit loved her, or some idiots online created some theory about how she is the center of the Venom movies. Mrs. Chen shows up to give Eddie a moment to fix himself up, leading to “that dance scene” that killed the film completely. - Andy Serkis as Knull:
Ok, first of all, Serkis as Knull nails the aura of that big bad evil guy who is a threat to the world PERFECTLY. All he does is sit on a throne, covered in symbiote “ropes”, and talk about how he is going to fuck the whole universe over when he gets free and it WORKS. It’s a shame that we will probably not get a follow-up to anything he does and this epic-looking guy is going to be remembered as nothing more than bookends to one of the worst Superhero movies since Steel.
It’s Good If You Wanted A Comedy
If you try to look at Venom: The Last Dance in the same way you looked at Venom or Venom: Let There Be Carnage, then you’re going to miss what this film trilogy has become. Instead of the Lethal Protector, you get a man who is annoyed with having to do anything at all and an alien who wants to eat brains all the time and make shitty references that make no sense.
Venom: The Last Dance is a comedy movie, and if you think it’s an action or adventure movie then you have blinders on. That being said, if you view it in the same vein as The Odd Couple, a TV show that maybe 3 people besides me remember, then it is not too bad. Venom’s wisecracks land with a chuckle, and a few actual laughs at times. The sillier moments could be forgiven with this mindset too.
It’s hard to find praise for Venom: The Last Dance as I just feel numb to the movie, almost forgetting about 90% of it as I want to keep my original love and view of Venom and his adventures in New York… And yes, he finally gets to New York, and not once do they mention Spider-Man, not that he would save this shitshow of a movie.
We did get to see a little bit of blood and gore for a PG-rated film, something that this trilogy should never have been rated after Deadpool was a thing. Seeing Venom bite the heads off some villains was a step forward from the first film, but without any blood spurting, it just felt like the effects were forgotten and the edge of the scene was lost. PG rating for Venom should never have been a thing and it is one of the main things that should have been addressed by now.
Too Many Symbiotes in the Kitchen
The King in Black is a large and epic storyline that brings in all of Marvel’s roster in order to take down Knull, and with Venom being a forced stand-alone movie trilogy, there is ZERO chance that we will see Venom interact with anyone from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hell, they start the movie by ripping Venom out of that specific universe just to make sure that the viewer knows that there is no hope at all for a Spider-Man cameo or anything to happen in these movies.
That being said, using Knull makes Venom: The Last Dance feel like there is still one more film to go, but since his scenes are the opening of the film and then a mid-credits scene, there doesn’t feel like there was a point to having him in Venom: The Last Dance at all, even to create a reason for the Xenophages to hunt Venom down.
Venom: The Last Dance stuffers from ADHD, as in it cannot focus correctly for more than 5 seconds. Venom spends the majority of the film making his way to Las Vegas, which just happens to be near the real focus of the movie: Area 55, a hidden underground version of Area 51 where Dr Inclusion and her assistant Dr Diversity spend a lot of time looking at a returning character from Venom: Let There Be Carnage as he becomes the main character from something that can only be described as one of those Monster Fucker “Romance novels” that fill your local book shop these days. Venom: The Last Dance is an internet degenerate’s wet dream in most ways with these Scientists and their many floating space-goo monsters.
Then there is “that dance scene” aka The Last Dance as mentioned in this movie. When Venom/Eddie makes it to Las Vegas, after knocking out a drunk guy and stealing his suit (Let’s just forget that Venom can MIMIC CLOTHING! aka one of the many abilities that the writers forgot about over THREE FUCKING MOVIES!), he encounters Mrs Chen, the store clerk from the other two films who just happens to have won so much in the Casino that she has the Penthouse Suite, leading to her and Venom dancing to the ABBA song “Dancing Queen”… Well, a remix of it anyway. This scene is the point where my excitement of anything good happening died completely.
Sure, we got the big explosive action-filled final act, but by that time the damage had been done. People were getting bored, so bored that we noticed a bunch of people walking out of the film to go to the bathroom, get more popcorn, or just walk around to do anything but fall asleep in the theater chairs. When the credits started to roll, I had never seen a theater room empty so fast with people complaining about how they wasted time and money on a sub-par film.
Venom: The Last Dance… Thank God For That
My wife and I had a discussion about Venom as a trilogy of films now that it has been completed, and the conclusion we came to was that Venom: The Last Dance should have been called something different, then it could have been used to set up Carnage and Knull for the third film. We agreed that Sony blew its load too quickly with Venom: Let There Be Carnage as anything that came afterward would not be able to handle the standard that came from Carnage showing up.
Venom: The Last Dance is not the ending I would have wanted for my favorite comic book character, not at all. Venom should have been going out swinging, taking down a world-ending threat like Knull instead of making a “noble sacrifice” of holding 4 to 5 Xenophages under an acid bath, which sounds more exciting than it looked on screen. The final scene of Eddie looking at the Statue of Liberty should have been the beginning of the real adventure of Venom, not the end of a trilogy that just got even more lost along the way.
Summary
Venom: The Last Dance should have been the big send-off for what should have been the biggest, most kick-ass anti-hero character to ever grace the Superhero genre, instead, we were given a sub-par road trip movie with a bickering married couple combined with a bookended story briefs in order to tease a possible continuation. From the opening moments, you can tell this movie had no direction and no idea what to do to fill 109 minutes… A sad end for one of comic book’s most popular characters.
Pros
- The Xenophages looked cool
- Some jokes landed with a laugh
Cons
- That fucking dance scene
- PG Rating
- Knull/King in Black story used as bookends
- No notable Symbiotes
- The Eddie & Venom bickering wears thin on the nerves
- The Hippie Family
In contrast to other sci-fi heroes, like Interstellar’s Cooper, who ventures into the unknown for the sake of humanity and discovery, knowing the sacrifice of giving up his family, Grace is externally a cynical coward. With no family to call his own, you’d think he’d have the will to go into space for the sake of the planet’s future. Nope, he’s got no courage because the man is a cowardly dog. However, Goddard’s script feels strikingly reflective of our moment. Grace has the tools to make a difference; the Earth flashbacks center on him working towards a solution to the antimatter issue, replete with occasionally confusing but never alienating dialogue. He initially lacks the conviction, embodying a cynicism and hopelessness that many people fall into today.
The film threads this idea effectively through flashbacks that reveal his reluctance, giving the story a tragic undercurrent. Yet, it also makes his relationship with Rocky, the first living thing he truly learns to care for, ever more beautiful.
When paired with Rocky, Gosling enters the rare “puppet scene partner” hall of fame alongside Michael Caine in The Muppet Christmas Carol, never letting the fact that he’s acting opposite a puppet disrupt the sincerity of his performance. His commitment to building a gradual, affectionate friendship with this animatronic creation feels completely natural, and the chemistry translates beautifully on screen. It stands as one of the stronger performances of his career.
Project Hail Mary is overly long, and while it can be deeply affecting, the film leans on a few emotional fake-outs that become repetitive in the latter half. By the third time it deploys the same sentimental beat, the effect begins to feel cloying, slightly dulling the powerful emotions it built earlier. The constant intercutting between past and present can also feel thematically uneven at times, occasionally undercutting the narrative momentum. At 2 hours and 36 minutes, the film feels like it’s stretching itself to meet a blockbuster runtime when a tighter cut might have served better.
FINAL STATEMENT
Project Hail Mary is a meticulously crafted, hopeful, and dazzling space epic that proves the most moving friendship in film this year might just be between Ryan Gosling and a rock.
DAN WEBSTER:
It may now seem like ancient history, especially to younger listeners, but it was only 26 years ago when the streets of Seattle were filled with protesters, police and—ultimately—scenes of what ended up looking like pure chaos.
It is those scenes—put together to form a portrait of what would become known as the “Battle of Seattle” —that documentary filmmaker Ian Bell captures in his powerful documentary feature WTO/99.
We’ve seen any number of documentaries over the decades that report on every kind of social and cultural event from rock concerts to war. And the majority of them follow a typical format: archival footage blended with interviews, both with participants and with experts who provide an informational, often intellectual, perspective.
WTO/99 is something different. Like The Perfect Neighbor, a 2026 Oscar-nominated documentary feature, Bell’s film consists of what could be called found footage. What he has done is amass a series of news reports and personal video recordings into an hour-and-42-minute collection of individual scenes, mostly focused on a several-block area of downtown Seattle.
That is where a meeting of the WTO, the World Trade Organization, was set to be held between Nov. 30 and Dec. 3, 1999. Delegates from around the world planned to negotiate trade agreements (what else?) at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.
Months before the meeting, however, a loose coalition of groups—including NGOs, labor unions, student organizations and various others—began their own series of meetings. Their objective was to form ways to protest not just the WTO but, to some of them, the whole idea of a world order they saw as a threat to the economic independence of individual countries.
Bell’s film doesn’t provide much context for all this. What we mostly see are individuals arguing their points of view as they prepare to stop the delegates from even entering the convention center. Meanwhile, Seattle authorities such as then-Mayor Paul Schell and then-Police Chief Norm Stamper—with brief appearances by Gov. Gary Locke and King County Executive Ron Sims—discuss counter measures, with Schell eventually imposing a curfew.
That decision comes, though, after what Bell’s film shows is a peaceful protest evolving into a street fight between people parading and chanting, others chained together and splinter groups intent on smashing the storefronts of businesses owned by what they see as corporate criminals. One intense scene involves a young woman begging those breaking windows to stop and asking them why they’re resorting to violence. In response a lone voice yells their reasoning: “Self-defense.”
Even more intense, though, are the actions of the Seattle police. We see officers using pepper spray, tear gas, flash grenades and other “non-lethal” means such as firing rubber pellets into the crowd. In one scene, a uniformed guy—not identified as a police officer but definitely part of the security crowd, which included National Guardsmen—is shown kicking a guy in the crotch.
The media, too, can’t avoid criticism. Though we see broadcast reporters trying to capture what was happening—with some affected like everybody else by the tear gas that filled the streets like a winter fog—the reports they air seem sketchy, as if they’re doctors trying to diagnose a serious illness by focusing on individual cells. And the images they capture tend to highlight the violence over the well-meaning actions of the vast majority of protesters.
Reactions to what Bell has put on the screen are bound to vary, based on each viewer’s personal politics. Bell revels his own stance by choosing selectively from among thousands of hours of video coverage to form the narrative he feels best captures what happened those two decades-and-change ago.
If nothing else, WTO/99 does reveal a more comprehensive picture of what happened than we got at the time. And, too, it should prepare us for the future. The way this country is going, we’re bound to see a lot more of the same.
Call it the “Battle for America.”
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
——
Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio.
NEW YORK (OSV News) – As its title suggests, “Scream 7” (Paramount) is the latest extension of a long-lived horror franchise, one that’s currently approaching its 30th anniversary on screen. Since each chapter of this slasher saga has been a bloodsoaked mess, the series’ longevity will strike moviegoers of sense as inexplicable.
Yet the slog continues. While the previous film in the sequence shifted the action from California to New York, this second installment, following a 2022 quasi-reboot, settles on a Midwestern locale and reintroduces us to the series’ original protagonist, Sidney Evans, nee Prescott (Neve Campbell).
Having aged out of the adolescent demographic on whom the various murderers who have donned the Ghostface mask that serves as these films’ dubious trademark over the years seem to prefer to prey, Sidney comes equipped with a teen daughter, Tatum (Isabel May). Will Tatum prove as resourceful in evading the unwanted attentions of Ghostface as Mom has?
On the way to answering that question, a clutch of colorless minor characters fall victim to the killer, who sometimes gets — according to his or her lights — creative. Thus one is quite literally made to spill her guts, while another ends up skewered on a barroom’s pointy beer tap.
Through it all, director Kevin Williamson and his co-writer Guy Busick try to peddle a theme of female empowerment in the face of mortal danger. They also take a stab, as it were, at constructing a plotline about intergenerational family tensions. When not jarring viewers with grisly images, however, they’re only likely to lull them into a stupor.
The film contains excessive gory violence, including disembowelment and impaling, underage drinking, mature topics, a couple of profanities, several milder oaths, pervasive rough and considerable crude language and occasional crass expressions. The OSV News classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
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