Venom: The Last Dance

Okay, here’s the deal with _Venom: The Last Dance_. It’s like ordering your favorite burger and realizing halfway through they forgot the sauce. Tom Hardy? Still killing it as Eddie and Venom—his back-and-forth with himself is weirdly entertaining and even a little emotional. There are some genuinely fun and heartfelt moments that remind you why this duo worked in the first place. But man, the rest? A hot mess. The plot is all over the map, the new characters are forgettable, and the villain? Weak sauce. It feels like the filmmakers just kind of shrugged and said, “Eh, good enough.” Sure, there are flashes of that buddy-comedy charm, but not enough to save the movie from feeling like it’s limping to the finish line. If this is the final Venom movie (and I hope it is), I’m not gonna cry about it. It’s a mixed bag—fun in bits, but overall, it’s like Venom himself: a bit too sloppy to fully love.

I'm typically not a fan of the Marvel universe films. I find them over stated, not especially intelligent and oftentimes, quite repetitive. "Venom" is the rare exception to this rule. For starters there's Tom Hardy, who is, by any measure, an excellent actor. Secondly, there's the interplay between Hardy and Venom which can be genuinely funny. This latest and possibly last film in the series, "Venom: The Last Dance", is, I believe, the weakest in the line up. Unlike its predecessors, it feels a little bit rushed and somehow, anti climatic. That said, it still has its moments of engaging humour and not half decent action. In summary, its a shame to see "Venom" shelved (if in fact that's the case) as its one of the better Marvel universe franchises, with great chemistry between Hardy and his other worldly alter ego, Venom. Worth a look if you enjoyed the other films.

I like all the Venom movies. The humour works. Fun to watch Hardy play a puppet. Would have been a 10 without that blast door thing. Still a blast. No deductions for runtime.