Venom is quite an odd franchise, huh? The hero really isn’t a hero. The monster is sorta fun while the man is a wet blanket. The problems Venom faces are almost entirely from the same origins that brought us Venom – in other words, Venom exists on Earth just to clean up his own mess – and the Earthling who hosts this parasite often seems indifferent towards being the vessel of an amoral monster.
But, hey, it’s all good fun, right?
Once again, we find Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) talking to himself while his monstrous alter ego has all the fun. For those who missed the first two installments of this tale, there’s this mediocre Bay Area reporter (Brock) who has a personal extra-terrestrial infestation. This infestation is some sort of malleable black goo. It can be arbitrarily large, often creating a black exo-skeleton for the host; it is also arbitrarily strong, arbitrarily impenetrable, arbitrarily energetic, and has an arbitrary number of limbs. The creature that lives in Eddie Brock has a decent sense of big picture right and wrong, but a very, very poor sense of right and wrong in the micro.
Sometimes it’s hard to describe, but try to imagine that there was just a normal shlub named “Clark Kent” and Superman was a tumor in Kent’s brain. And this tumor could exhibit superpowers, sometimes saving the world, but often using them to be dick to the locals. That, to me, is Venom.
In this edition, Venom: The Last Dance, Eddie Brock has been named as a prime suspect in a murder, news of which never happens in real life, but in the movie world, it has found Eddie hanging out in Mexico. Hence, Eddie and Venom decide they need to go to NYC, which Venom seeks to accomplish by attaching itself to the outside of an airplane.
And then the plot shows up. A xenophage from Venom’s corner of the universe attacks Venom mid-flight. Long story short, the aliens are downed among the tumbleweeds in Southern Nevada, all setting up for a giant 
Vegas conflict. If that seems like a long way to go to get aliens to play in Vegas, well, you’re not wrong. It is a long way to go.
The “joy” – for lack of a better word – is that Eddie tends to be a moral man, while Venom is a vigilante. And Venom is the more dominant of the two, in pretty much every way something can be more dominant than another thing. So, the big joke is Eddie will plead with Venom to leave Mexican cartel members alone and Venom will bite their heads off. Ha ha. And, as audience members, we’re good with this. Everyone Venom punishes pretty much deserves what they get. And still this all seems like it comes from the same dark place where the country created President Trump – vigilantism is just neither a good way to live nor a good thing to root for. We put ourselves at arm’s distance by repeating that Venom is a being from outer space, and yet, we heartily root for the creature’s antics.
Venom: The Last Dance seems on par with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. By that I mean, if you NEED to love this film, there’s enough here to love. I found the parts I was awake for mildly amusing, but not much better than that. The best scene in the film is probably when Eddie/Venom gets taken in by a family of hippies searching for Area 51 and they have a rousing sing-a-long of “Major Tom.” Even so, I would have found the moment more amusing if Venom had joined in; he was clearly enjoying the sing-a-long even if Eddie wasn’t. And that’s kinda how I feel about this film –show it to ten random people and I guarantee someone will like it and someone won’t, not dissimilar to every moment in the film itself.
There once was a space parasite
Who adopted a human, all right?
The two made a splash
And then made a dash
By quite literally hopping a flight
Rated PG-13, 109 Minutes
Director: Kelly Marcel
Writer: Kelly Marcel, Tom Hardy
Genre: Tom Hardy talks to himself
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: If you liked the first two, you’ll like this one
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People waiting for anything in this franchise to matter
