At the risk of being cancelled for defying the status quo, I enjoyed Venom: The Last Dance. It Was Amusing!

I like Venom!

My favorite moment in 2018’s Venom was when the titular killer Symbiote from outer space tells his human host, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), that on his home planet, he was something of a loser. 

Before he was the subject of a cinematic trilogy, Venom joined Deadpool, Wolverine, and The Punisher as Marvel’s preeminent badasses. If you went to high school with someone who scrawled a Punisher or Wolverine or Venom or Deadpool logo on the back of their jean jacket, you knew that they were not to be fucked with, at least if you like holding onto your limbs and life. 

Venom may be a badass in various incarnations other than Spiderman 3 (which I quite enjoyed, Topher Grace aside), but in Tom Hardy Venom movies, he’s also a loser. He’s not just a loser. Venom is a geek from beyond the stars. He’s an extraterrestrial dork. He’s a big goof with a regrettable taste for human flesh. 

Yes, Venom eats people, but he has a code of honor. He’ll only eat people who deserve to be eaten. Do you know who should be eaten by Venom? Donald Trump. It would have been so fucking cool if, at the end of Trump’s big Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden, Venom came out and devoured Trump in one monster bite and then went after J.D. Vance and the rest of the MAGA brain trust. 

That would be a satisfying ending to Venom’s story and the 2024 presidential election. I can only imagine how liberating it would be for Republicans. They wouldn’t have to pretend that Donald Trump wasn’t an insane monster they both hate and fear because he’d been publicly devoured by a fictional super-villain turned anti-hero turned regular hero from outer space. 

Venom is a big silly in Venom: The Last Dance. He’s not just not terrifying or scary: he’s freaking adorable. I just wanted to give the guy a big hug. I also like that, within this world, Eddie Brock is also a bit of a Poindexter. Hardy apparently modeled his performance as Eddie Brock after Woody Allen. Hardy is a real chameleon. He can be iconically badass like he was in Mad Max: Fury Road and The Dark Knight Rises, but he can also be a weaselly little nerd with nothing going for him beyond the superpowered monster inside.  

He’s milquetoast and unassuming, but he’s got a monster inside him, literally as well as figuratively. 

I did not give Venom a glowing review at Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place, primarily because it took so long to introduce Venom, and it seemed way too interested in Eddie Brock’s journalism career. 

I gave the movie a mixed review because I was bored by its exposition and unnecessary subplots, but I dug Venom, liked Eddie Brock, and really dug the Venom/Eddie Brock dynamic. 

The makers of Venom: The Last Dance clearly read my review. They probably laminated it, brought it to set every day, and used it as a bible for redeeming the series. 

Venom: The Last Dance wastes no time introducing or re-introducing Venom, who is on the run in Mexico after his kerfluffle with Woody Harrelson’s Carnage in the previous film. We start in outer space, with Knull (Andy Serkis), a supervillain who created the symbiotes who have imprisoned him, dispatching symbiote-eating creatures called Xenophages to travel to Earth to steal from Venom, a MacGuffin called a Codex with the power to free him. 

From that point, we don’t see much of Knull, but we see a lot of the xenophage, a Lovecraftian tangle of skin, tendrils, and muscle flying malevolently in every direction. It’s not the most impressive alien monster, but it’s good enough. 

That’s because Venom: The Last Dance isn’t really about the bad guys. It’s not about plot. It’s not about world-building. What Venom: The Last Dance is ultimately concerned with is the friendship between Eddie Brock and Venom. 

In Venom: The Last Dance, Venom is a cross between an embarrassing sidekick and a golden retriever puppy. He’s a guileless Goth man-eater with a black, slimy, tentacled heart of gold and a real love and appreciation for his friend and host. 

Eddie Brock and Venom were mismatched partners who took some time to warm up to one another in Venom. Life is full of strange and difficult situations, few stranger than getting to know and like the malevolent alien creature inside you that hungers for human flesh.  

Venom: The Last Dance really leans into the humor endemic in the situation that would probably have enraged me if I had taken this mythology seriously. I do not take this mythology seriously, so I appreciated the movie’s persistent goofiness. 

Venom: The Last Dance is more of a buddy comedy than a conventional superhero movie. In the widely maligned Spiderman 3, Sam Raimi enraged an easily enraged portion of Spiderman’s fanbase by featuring a notorious sequence of evil Peter Parker swaggering down the street, disco-dancing subtly while offending every pretty woman he sees. 

I liked Spider-Man 3. I dubbed it a Secret Success when I covered it for My World of Flops for the same reason that I liked Venom: The Last Dance more than anyone else in the world (I’m guessing): it doesn’t take itself or its hero seriously and has a lot of fun exploring the comic possibilities endemic in a shutterbug with spidey powers and a geek with a zany but friendly alien monster inside him respectively. 

So it almost feels like writer-director Kelly Marcel (who worked on the scripts for Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage before being promoted to director here) is trolling Spiderman fans by having Venom enjoy a full-on production number in which he dances with Mrs. Chen (Kelly Lu), a beautiful convenience store owner who previously appeared in Venom, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Spider-Man: Across the Universe, to Abba’s “Dancing Queen.” 

On a similar note, I was delighted by a similar sequence in which Venom enthusiastically sings “A Space Oddity” in a van with a hippie family they befriend, headed by Rhys Ifans (who previously played Dr. Connors/The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man) and Alanna Ubach. Ifans and Ullbach have two of the biggest roles in the film, and they aren’t superheroes or supervillains or government operatives; they’re just flower children who are into aliens, and Venom: The Last Dance has a surprising amount of time to devote to the characters and their children.

Throughout this scene, Tom Hardy has an expression that silently but unmistakably says, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” which seems to belong to the actor (who cowrote the story with Marcel) as much as the character. 

Venom: The Last Stand goes to some very silly places. It’s designed to be the last chapter in a trilogy and mark Venom’s tragic end, but Marcel brings a light touch to the material that plays to its strengths, most notably in Hardy’s inspired dual performance as Eddie Brock and Venom. 

I know I’m probably going to be “canceled” for giving Venom: The Last Dance a positive review. I can probably say goodbye to my career as a film writer, but to me, it’s more important to be honest about my enjoyment of a very silly movie than to conform to the status quo/Illuminati’s whims)

I’m sorry, but I write my reviews for the people, not the sheeple. I’m here to open minds and blow them!

That’s why I can stand before God and the internet and scream out loud, “You know, I kind of liked Venom: The Last Dance. It was goofy but fun.” Lightning may strike me down immediately after saying those words of defiance, but I don’t care. I’m going to say it anyway. 

Three and a half stars out of Five