Last night, Kid 2 and I went to see Venom: The Last Dance. We certainly weren’t planning to see it on opening night. It’s not as if I was clamoring for the release of this movie. In fact, this is actually my kid-free weekend. X2 had an event going on at local theater asked if I wanted to hang out with Kid 2 for a couple hours. We decided to see the movie, as it worked for the timeframe we had and it was in the same multiplex that X2 was at.
I haven’t even seen Venom (2018) in its entirety, let alone any of the Venom: Let There Be Carnage. It’s not that I’m not a fan of the Venom character. I have fond memories of his early appearances in The Amazing Spider-Man comic. But like all other good things, Marvel decided to capitalize Venom’s success in the 1990s, effectively running the character into the ground, in my opinion.
Venom was the first “Spider-Man Sony universe” movies. Sony – who owns the movies to Spider-Man and all his related characters – decided to start releasing movies based on ancillary characters from the Spider-Man canon; as Spider-Man himself is currently involved in Disney’s MCU.
With no connections to the Spider-Man character or any references there to, I was really reluctant to see Venom. To this day, I’ve only watched bits and pieces of the movie, but I do like Tom Hardy as an actor. He has one of those actors who will add or drop weight or alter his appearance in order to slip into a particular role.
The movie version of Venom is a story about a journalist name Eddie Brock. Several “Symbiotes” aliens from outer space who crash on Earth. The franchise particularly focuses on the black ball of cool that ultimately becomes the titular character. The Symbiote merges with Brock, giving him super human abilities. Together, Eddie and Venom decide to becoming a “lethal protector“: they look out for the good guys and deliver lethal force to the bad guys.
… The Last Dance introduces us to Knull (Andy Serkis, in an uncredited role) a being who is space and is waiting for a portal into our world. The key to Knull arriving on Earth is could only be created with something called the Codex. It turns out, the symbiosis between Eddie Brock, and venom created the Kodex. When Venom emerges and takes over Eddie’s body, the Codex is active and acts as a beacon to Knull’s alien goon squad. Knull’s arrival on Earth would mean the end of all human life. .
Throughout the story, it is revealed that the death of either the symbiot or Eddie will destroy the Codex. To complicate matters further, Eddie and Venom are fugitives on the run for murder. Also, the military has become involved in collecting and studying alien specimens .
It seems like every successful movie franchise likes to do everything is trilogies now. TLD does a fine job of wrapping up the Venom trilogy; although it does leave Open the possibility of future installments. To be honest, I liked this movie a lot more than I expected to. Venom is very much the “anti-hero character“ He’s not quite as crass as Deadpool; nor does he break the fourth wall the way that Deadpool does. Still, Venom is very much a reluctant antihero who has a little bit of sass – and a penchant for brutal justice -to him.
The Venom character is fun. He is enjoyable and to be quite honest, he is definitely something of a softy by the end of TLD. This is a far cry from his initial comic book appearances of the late 1980s where he simply wanted to kill Spider-Man and eat his brains. The filmmakers have definitely leaned into the “lethal protector “concept. However, that was necessary in order to make the character into a likable protagonist.
FINAL TAKE
I like the movie! It was not my favorite comic book movie ever, but that certainly wasn’t entertaining two hours. More of the point, it has prompted me to go back and see both venom and venom: let there be carnage. There’s not really a whole lot of substance to Eddie Brock, at least not in the last dance. In fact, I would say that the Venom symbiot was probably the more likable character of the two. However, Tom Hardy does a fine enough job to bring both characters to light. As I understand it, he also worked on the story for this final movie and serves as a producer.
My big concern going into this movie was the way that the whole “planet of the Symbiotes” concept from the comic books have been expanded upon, and quite frankly probably beat into the ground. In spite of these reservations, I found the movie struck a good balance of introducing the new characters, and not going too far – even in the realms of comic book suspension of disbelief. As of viewer, I was still able to get emotionally invested in this story. Having said that, I would not recommend seen this movie without having watched the first two installments, or having some prior knowledge of the Venom character from the comics.
Venom: The Last Dance (2024) is currently playing in theaters. Venom (2018) is currently streaming on Disney+.
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The article “Rob Reviews: Venom: The Last Dance” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob
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