‘Venom: The Last Dance’ rules, actually

The initial reviews for Venom: The Last Dance put the third installment to Tom Hardy’s Venom movies at a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes. Now that I’ve seen the Kelly Marcel film, I can safely say that this movie is just a lot of fun.

Hardy is back as Eddie Brock, the former investigative reporter who has been living a double life as Eddie and the symbiote Venom for the last year. But the film starts off right where we left Eddie and Venom in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Remember the tease that they’d be a part of that movie only to realize that it was a bit?

The Last Dance is very much Eddie and Venom’s swan song. Tom Hardy has said that this is the end and only a match against Spider-Man would bring him back and the movie reflects that motif. Eddie is blamed for the death of Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham) at the hands of Carnage. So Eddie and Venom decide to go on the run but learn that a Xenophage is tracking them.

Essentially the movie is Eddie and Venom on the run without the ability of Venom taking over the body. That’s it, that’s the movie. Knull is trying to free himself from the prison the symbiotes put him in and that means getting a key that exists within Eddie and Venom. The Xenophage is trying to take that back to Knull.

For all the flare and chaos of the first two movies, The Last Dance is surprisingly straight forward to me. Eddie and Venom don’t want to be separated and they don’t want to die and everyone else wants those things to happen. Except for Knull and the Xenophage, who want them alive for the key. That’s that!

It is still a love story

Look, you can sit and pick apart the logic of this movie until the end of time. Why is Dr. Payne (Juno Temple) wearing the same shirt as her dead brother? What is Rex Strickland’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) DEAL!? So does the inclusion of Rhys Ifans mean that the Spider-Man of this Sony verse is NOT Andrew Garfield? All of those are valid questions.

But at the end of the day, I come to the Venom movies to have fun and that’s what The Last Dance gave me: A fun time. I don’t think you need to come into these movies and unpack every element of them. There is chaotic science and a bunch of random nonsense happening at any given time but then Venom does an entire dance sequence with Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) and you suddenly don’t care about how we got here.

Eddie Brock’s entire bit this movie was that he could not keep shoes on. First, he broke a Croc. Then he lost a cowboy boot. Martin (Ifans) gives him weird sandals that get peed on and he finally trades them for dress shoes he wants to keep. To me, that’s peak comedy and peak cinema.

This movie is Eddie and Venom’s story. Take out all the extra plot and characters and it is still about these two needing each other. All three of these movies are love stories. I don’t think that they are changing the world but they bring a fun energy to comic book movies.

Venom: The Last Dance is a chaotic and brilliant ending to Eddie and Venom’s story. Still wish they would have smooched though.