Venom: The Last Dance - Movie Review

Not gonna lie, alien parasite turning me into a super-powered vigilante. That don't sound too bad. What does sound bad is a digital parasite turning your device into a paperweight, which brings me to the sponsor of this video. This video is brought to you by NordVPN. NordVPN's a VPN service that strives to help make our traversing this digital hellscape a little safer. Nord's threat protection is that digital guard standing between you and... all of it. Advantageous for me and my fellow retro gamers as we're always looking for the best retro game homebrew. I think that's the file. Is it the file? Right, good to have Nord in your corner there. That'll stonewall something if you zig when you shoulda zag. And keeping it in entertainment, Nord's great if you're just looking for that binge. The show or movie you like, though it's available on the streaming service, might not be available in your region. You can change your digital location with one click. 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Different franchise, but it looked like something out of Diablo. So yeah, basically, they made up a new plot point in which Venom has become a MacGuffin for them. So now Venom in his full form, you know, when the symbiote comes around Eddie Brock and he becomes Venom. That has become like Frodo putting on the ring in Lord of the Rings. You get a bit of it in the first act of the movie, the first 20 minutes in Venom The Last Dance. But when he's in his full form, he becomes a beacon to these symbiote hunters. They can hone in on him, they know where he is. So yeah, like Frodo in that ring, don't do that. Evil can hone in on you. So now what do we do? Eddie Brock and his symbiote alien backpack are gonna go cross-country. Which means, to be fair, they do play up that which has been a standout in these Venom movies. Which is this bickering, buddy, odd couple with an alien friendship. And it's basically what you have to carry you through a large portion of this film. Yeah, you have these scientists in Area 51, it's not Area 51 anymore, I guess they're shutting that down. It's below Area 51, it's Area 55, it's different. If they weren't shutting down Area 51, they wouldn't have the tools necessary to take on the aliens at the end. Making shit up for the sake of shit happening, yeah. Make no mistake, you're gonna run into that sensation a lot in this movie. More than a few, we'll say loopholes, plot holes, conveniences. There are some things that don't make sense, but they're there for that nostalgic feeling. Or at the very least, to have Venom become Venom so the aliens can be like, Oh, there he is! Let's run to Vegas. All for what? For what? Look, I like Abba as much as the next guy, but all for a dance sequence to Dancing Queen? That's just irresponsible at that point. Lethal? Yes. Protector? Hmm? The military's going after Eddie Brock as well. Eddie Brock on his road trip runs across Reece E. Fonz. I mean, I saw him in the trailer. I was like, he played Dr. Connors. As much as Venom makes the joke in this movie, I'm sick of this multiverse shit! And I do agree. Still, you cast Reece E. Fonz in a Venom movie in which you play- No, he's just a guy. But he's just a guy you can show in the trailer to make people go, Oh. Oh, is there a- No. It's fine for it to be a no. It's fine for him to just play a guy. They just see what they're doing there. This movie just has actors that were underutilized. Juno Temple, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Reece E. Fonz. Chiwetel Ejiofor, I was really looking forward to seeing what he was going to bring to this. He could have been played by anybody. To be fair, Reece E. Fonz hamming it up, but he was hamming it up in a way that is on brand, so to speak. Not necessarily the Venom brand, but this Venom trilogy brand. Point is, that character and his family, it was kind of a funny bit at first, but they kept him around a lot longer than they should have. At a point, there's just this family to be there so they can be in peril, so Venom can try to save them while he's also fighting aliens. Felt a bit like The Flash's job in Justice League, in which they just conjured a family out of thin air so The Flash had something to do there. To be fair, without this family in the movie, The Last Act would have felt like it needed something else. But that's the point. That's actually the point of the entire film. There are these ideas in here that work in a bubble. When they try to come together for the bigger picture, the movie doesn't quite find symbiosis. The Last Act is pretty fun. Has some fun action. Kind of feels like a video game. More specifically, the Spider-Man 2 video game. Symbiotes everywhere! I was kind of playing the mental game of who's the goo, because I just didn't know who was on screen. Kind of feels like a retcon, since in the first Venom movie, a big part of the plot was that it's very rare for a human and this alien parasite to find symbiosis. In Venom The Last Dance, the movie's just like, No! Fuck it! Look, in the end, Venom The Last Dance, you already know if you're gonna like the movie. Here's how you can tell. Did you enjoy the previous Venom movies? If so, you'll probably enjoy Venom The Last Dance. To be fair, you could probably take Venom Let There Be Carnage out of the equation, as Venom The Last Dance is a definite improvement on that. If you didn't like the first Venom movie, there's no reality where you walk out of Venom The Last Dance like, Wow! They finally found their stride. The Venom movie. That always should have been... No. Not gonna happen. All in all, this movie is absolutely a mixed bag. It's ham and cheese fun in that mid-2000s comic book movie kind of way, which, to be fair, is now in the realm of nostalgia. Tom Hardy's a professional who's clocking into work, and we get a solid emotional moment in here. But as for a Venom trilogy, I just think we should have gotten a better one than the one we got. This movie could properly be titled Venom Things Happen, because that's the thing I can guarantee you. Things do happen in this movie. What they are, in one ear, out the other, it's becoming fuzzier and fuzzier as the minutes go on. A connective thread of cohesive storytelling? Not here. So your mileage may vary. But for me, I'm just not gonna remember it in T-minus one day. Yeah, so that trilogy happened. Wanna be fair and give credit where credit's due, I appreciate the fact that the movie's not that long. Internet says this movie's an hour, 50 minutes. I checked my watch when it ended without trailers, and if you don't stay for credits, it's about 90. So I appreciate that. Normalize the 90-minute blockbuster. Let's bring it back. And this concludes the Tom Hardy Venom saga. Until the next Tom Hardy Venom movie. People are already asking him about it. He says he's down. It's Hollywood. Nothing's ever really The Last Dance. Alright, so Venom, The Last Dance, have you seen it? What did you think about it? What'd you think of this Venom trilogy as a whole? What'd you think? How do you rank them? Have fun in the comment section. Whatever you think, comment below, let me know. And as always, if you like what you've seen here and you wanna see more, click right here to see more.