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Venom: The Last Dance

Farhad Dalal Founder
By-
Farhad Dalal
Rating
2 Star popcorn reviewss

Introduction

Oh lord, the mediocrity is just not ending post MAMI. The first and the second parts of the Venom franchise can best be termed as guilty pleasure given that neither of the previous two films were earth-shattering or even genre breaking in the superhero franchise. The first film of the franchise did capitalize on the shock value of a man being infected by an alien parasite of sorts, only to wreck havoc with its antics. The events otherwise were fun and games for sure. But when the second film also decided to serve more of the same, even if it was marginally better, it kind of left a stale impact in terms of the novelty that it vompletely ignored. But a little post credit scene showing the collision of the two worlds of Spiderman and Venom was an interesting proposition given the multiverse setup. But at the start of the latest installment of Venom titled Venom – The Last Dance, the idea of a multiverse was discarded early on. Clearly, the makers weren’t interested in treading that part which kind of made this final installment listless and even more stale.

Story & Screenplay

The premise of Venom : The Last Dance is pretty simple and kind of pointless – Eddie and Venom are now fugitives who are on the run, after being hunted by both of their worlds. The thing that connects the two together is the codex, something that Xenophages are after, triggered by Knull, the creator of the symbiotes. And this becomes the fulcrum around which the film revolves around while creating only brief moments that are fun and quirky but largely listless and pointless. The fun bits are served up early on when the duo of Eddie and Venom are involved in a little bar encounter wherein Venom is hell-bent on making his own drink with ‘Tequila’ playing in the background. Or even the hilarious plane sequence that does showcase Eddie-Venom hitchhiking a flight to New York only for them to encounter Xenophages in mid-air. But these moments are just few and far between.

One of the reasons why the drama doesn’t quite work here is because none of the characters here are well defined. There are a bunch of new characters that are introduced here which are completely clueless and have no real identities of their own besides having such binary motives of separating Eddie from Venom in order to avoid the Xenophages attack unleashed by Knull. And there was no real antagonist that would appear to be intimidating. This is literally the lowest common denominator as far as a superhero film is concerned, a plot so thin that it did become a bit of a task to sit through the 90 odd minute runtime. In between, the humour and zing of the protagonist does allow the drama to border on being frothy and frivolous, but if you notice closely, those events of Eddie befriending Martin and his family, or his reunion with Mrs. Chen was just used as a filler of sorts, for their individual tracks had no real bearing on the main story that itself was non-existent.

The extended final act face-off was devoid of any twists and turns, for I didn’t feel any emotional connect towards any character, neither was there a deliberate attempt to extract humour or even bouts of excitement that would make me sit-up and take notice. It was kind of flat and so very predictable, so much so that the actual emotional quotient that the makers did try to touch upon at the end also didn’t quite reach me, even with a little montage in play. But you know that it is a Marvel movie (lately) when the plot doesn’t impress you, but the mid-credit does. Same is the case here, the mid-credit is indeed splendid even though the post-credit felt kind of pointless, thereby summing up the screenplay here that really was listless and messy to say the least.

Dialogues, Music & Direction

The dialogues are quirky but only momentarily so, while being flat for most parts of the runtime. The BGM and music try their bit to enhance the impact of scenes that are otherwise pretty bland. The cinematography comprises of frames that are actually good, and I did like the technical prowess with which the finale sequence was shot. It definitely did paint a pleasant picture. The editing is alright but nothing much to shout about. Director Kelly Marcel does a decent job but you can only do so much when the script is wafer-thin. But at no point did I feel that the director used any inmovative methods to lift the impact of several scenes. The impact ranged from low to mid in a film that didn’t boast of great direction.

Performances

The performances are pretty good here but none of them could really save the day. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Strickland has a good screen presence and he is earnest with his act here. Rhys Ifans as Martin has his moments to shine. Juno Temple as Dr. Payne is such a stereotypical character that barely makes any impact. Stephen Graham as Mulligan is decent but he hardly is given any screen time here. This is where I feel sorry for a performer like Tom Hardy who has literally put his heart and soul in the performance as Eddie while adding a twang of humour as the voice of Venom. He is incredible here in an act that comes in a losing cause here.

Conclusion

Venom – The Last Dance is a messy and listless end to the Venom trilogy that is fun in bits and parts but largely bland and pointless. Available in a theatre near you.

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