Movie Review – Venom: The Last Dance

I haven’t rewatched either of the first two Venom movies. I remember enjoying the first one and was excited for the sequel but ultimately disappointed when it came out. I hoped this final movie in the trilogy would use the first two mildly amusing and, oftentimes, flawed movies and launch to new heights, and provide an ending that left us wanting more. But no. Not even close. This movie didn’t get past the opening scene before going off the rails.

As the opening sequence ended, I leaned over to my wife and asked, “What the hell was that about?”

MacGuffing It Up

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but in the first two movies, I don’t recall any hint about the creation of a codex if the symbiote saves the host’s body if it dies. If they set it up from the start so that the symbiote is there to use the host and discard it like single-use plastic, if it dies, then this might have gone somewhere. But early in this movie, Venom drops a bunch of exposition on Eddy that amounts to: remember when I brought you back to life in the previous movie? That was really stupid of me because in doing so, a codex was created that can be used as a key to unchain our creator who is older than the universe and wants to destroy it.

That is about the lamest MacGuffin I’ve ever heard of. The writers just made this up after the fact or else it would have, and should have, been explained earlier in the trilogy.

MacGuffin
An object, event, or character that drives the plot and motivates the characters, but is not inherently important.

Character Relationships

Early in the movie, we’re introduced to General Strickland and Dr. Payne. They appear to have a typical relationship between a scientist and a military officer. The doctor is optimistic and quirky. The military officer is more cautious. They seem to have mutual respect and play on the same team. Then the officer loses a soldier in the field and suddenly switches into kill them all mode and treats the scientist as an enemy. And as well, the scientist makes no overtures to the officer when she hears that he lost a soldier. If these were well-written characters, then the scientist would have consoled the officer and reinforced to the audience how much the officer cared about those under his command. The store should have strained their relationship but not broken it. That’s too easy and turns the characters into a writer’s puppet. Plus, we don’t know that the officer cares that much about those under his command. There’s never any previous scene where the officer gets to display his care. The audience only learns this after a death. This is where a few extra scenes that fleshes out the characters can work. But instead of fleshing out the characters, the writers chose to add silliness.

Scene Padding

The movie has a respectable runtime of 109 minutes, but don’t let that fool you. There are 16 minutes of end credits. SIXTEEN. The RunPee admin app doesn’t even let me make the end credits that long. I capped the number at 15 minutes because anything longer would probably be input as a mistake. When does a movie need sixteen minutes of end credits? Oh, and don’t think it’s because of the two extra scenes. Those two scenes combined are less than 1 minute 30 seconds in length.

The writers made an odd choice to introduce a family that was on a road trip into the movie. The only moderately important addition that the family makes to the story is to illustrate the idea that Eddy could have been a good father and to help Eddy get from the desert into Las Vegas. These characters serve no other purpose, yet they take up about 15 minutes of the middle of the film, all is consecutive scenes. It was like a mini-movie set within a movie. Sometimes, that can work, but it failed miserably here. One scene ended, we jump cut in time a little, and there’s another long scene with the family. At this point, my wife and I looked at each other with the WTF expression.

We also get the obligatory scene with Mrs. Chen. It’s completely random and a complete waste of time.

Character Lingering

You know how sometimes in a movie, the camera lingers on a minor character a little too long just to let you know this person will become important later? They did that with Christmas Scientist way too often. It only needs to be done once, but the director just couldn’t stop with one linger. It kept going until it became distracting. I get it; this character is going to do something to become important. Stop hinting at it.

Conclusion

The only thing this movie excels at is demonstrating how not to make a movie.

Grade: F

About The Peetimes: I would recommend the 2nd Peetime. It’s plenty long and there’s no action or plot development.

There are extra scenes during, or after, the end credits of Venom: The Last Dance.

Rated:	(PG-13) NA
Genres:	Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Starring:	Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Alanna Ubach
Director:	Kelly Marcel
Writer(s):	Kelly Marcel, Tom Hardy
Language:	English
Country:	United States, United Kingdom, Mexico

Plot
Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.