IN THE CINEMA: Venom’s Last Dance is a bad date with fate

The Snapshot: Venom’s Crazy Ending is a boring, alien-infested adventure story with little action…until a surprisingly dramatic finale.

Venom: The Last Dance

5 out of 10

PG, 1 hr 49 min. Sci-fi superhero adventure.

Screenplay and direction: Kelly Marcel.

With Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rhys Ifans, Alanna Ubach and Andy Serkis.

Can Venom’s insane hunger for villains ever truly be satisfied? Or perhaps the better question is: Will the audience’s huge appetite for something halfway decent be satisfied? Poison Will you ever be satisfied with a film?

Unfortunately, the answer to both questions is probably no. Venom: The Last Dance is the grim conclusion to Sony’s slow-moving superhero series, which ends the same way it began in 2018 – all bark but no bite.

Comics newcomers may not be familiar with the anti-hero Venom, aka human Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), whose body is infected with an alien parasite from outer space that transforms him into a sadistic, dark blue monster (also played by Hardy). .)

Eddie and Venom’s ongoing “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is still the most watchable part of this all-too-simple story and franchise. But for what should be the big, swelling ending to a superhero series, it feels petty and anticlimactic, especially with the minimal action or crime fight scenes.

The Last Dance suffers from the same story problem as the first two films: there’s a lot of boring exposition and setup for an hour before a truly exciting final battle scene pays off.

Read more here: The bloodbath comes too late Poison 2: Review

To be fair, The Last DanceThe big alien showdown at the end of the film is awesome, and if that kind of kinetic, risky action were incorporated into the rest of the film, Venom 3 would be a lot more fun. Once the evil aliens begin fighting Venom and his friends, the set pieces and visual effects are used effectively.

Unfortunately, this is where most of the positive aspects end. All of the best moments beforehand are shown in the trailers, giving away most of the plot before the audience even enters the theater.

Two other serious problems detract from both the fun and cohesion of the film. The first is that, unlike the first two films, there is no central, human villain. It’s supposed to be a space god named Knull (played by Andy Serkis, who funnily enough also directed). Poison 2 three years ago), but he’s on screen for less than a minute!

Second, the absence of Eddie’s romantic partner and deuteragonist Anne (played by five-time Oscar nominee Michelle Williams) is devastating. She is the second most important character in the franchise and since the last film in 2021, Anne has disappeared from the story and franchise without any explanation.

Director Kelly Marcel was a writer on the series Poison Films since 2018 and is now making her directorial debut. While she shows off her editing and camera skills as a director, her writing skills still can’t turn “Venom” into a feature-length story that’s fun or even makes sense.

One final thought: Why is the lighting like that throughout the film? dark? The stage lighting is so dim and literally unlit that in some scenes it’s difficult to see anything on the screen at all.

If this really is Venom’s last dance, I won’t be too sad to see him leave the dance floor. It’s like watching a drunk relative at a wedding – it was fun for a few minutes, but now it’s just time for them to get back to the hotel where they stop bothering people.