Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and SERIOUSLY?!!! THEY MADE A THIRD ONE!!!

As you’ve probably gathered over the years, I’m not a fan of the ‘Venom’ movies that have been released since 2018. I wouldn’t have minded these films not having Spider-Man in them so long as the filmmakers get the character Venom right and he was taken seriously.

Sadly, that’s not what happened, as what should be psychological horror-thriller films ended up being comedic adventures featuring a version of Venom that became stupider as we went along. It astonishes me three movies were made at all. Quite an achievement.

It’s a flawed and nonsensical achievement, but I will give the ‘Venom’ film series credit for enduring so long. I just hope that ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ (Terrible movie title, by the way) is the actual final film of this trilogy we’ve been having, as I want to put it behind me.

Some might say a fourth ‘Venom’ film is a possibility, but the way ‘Sony’s Spider-Man Universe’ has been going with two failures in ‘Morbius’ and ‘Madame Web’, I’d say this particular cinematic universe is on its way out. ‘Kraven the Hunter’ could be the last one.

I will say that ‘The Last Dance’ is slightly better than ‘Let There Be Carnage’, the second ‘Venom’ movie, but that’s not saying much. Is it better than ‘Joker 2’ though? Well, it’s hard to say at this stage, since both ‘Joker 2’ and ‘Venom 3’ are very bad and on various levels.

I think I enjoyed ‘The Last Dance’ more than ‘Joker 2’, but I’d probably give both films 4 out of 10. At least there was passion behind the making of ‘Venom 3’ compared to ‘Joker 2’. Again, it’s a flawed passion, but at least the filmmakers wanted to make this movie. 😐

This happens to be Kelly Marcel’s directorial debut with ‘The Last Dance’. She previously penned the scripts for the first ‘Venom’ movie and ‘Let There Be Carnage’. I don’t think having her be the director of this third instalment of the ‘Venom’ film trilogy helps a lot. 😦

Here’s the thing. I don’t object to the stories being churned out in these ‘Venom’ films. If I could take them seriously and if they were presented in a serious manner, then maybe I would appreciate them a lot more and enjoy them for what they are than what they’re not.

But when Venom talks, you can’t take the films seriously. I’m sorry, every time I hear Venom speak, he just says stupid things. He sounds like a drunkard who can’t get sober. And he probably is drunk thinking about it when judging the film’s opening with Eddie and Venom.

I mean, this is what I think Venom would say if he found out you didn’t like this movie.

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Venom: Hey, you! You’re a loser! If you don’t like my movie, I shall eat you on the spot! In fact, I’ll eat you right now!

Venom roars and lunges for me and I scream in terror.

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It got my best mate Stephen laughing a lot when I put on the Venom voice saying that, and I’m glad I made him laugh, but that’s not what these ‘Venom’ films should be doing. They shouldn’t make you laugh. They should make you terrified whenever Venom is on screen.

Also, when I did that Venom voice to explain to my parents why the character doesn’t work in these movies, they remarked that I sounded like the Cookie Monster from ‘Sesame Street’. The idea of Venom sounding like the Cookie Monster shouldn’t happen!

As well as Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom, there’s Chiwetel Ejiofor (who played Baron Mordo in the ‘Doctor Strange’ films) as Rex Strickland and Rhys Ifans (who played the Lizard in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ and ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’) as Martin Moon in the movie.

You know, for all the hype that was building up of the possibility of Tom Hardy’s Venom meeting Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in the ‘MCU’, it seems to have gone to waste. How come Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rhys Ifans didn’t play Mordo and the Lizard respectively in this film?

There was also no need to recreate the post-credits scenes from the end of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ with Cristo Fernández reprising his role as the bartender. You could have easily replayed that post-credits scene before the film began and that would’ve been fine.

One thing I will praise the film for is that it made the wise decision to not have Michelle Williams’ character back from the previous two films. It was probably for the best she didn’t return in this one, especially when her character didn’t go anywhere in the second.

I also found the ‘Space Oddity’ scene with Eddie Brock, Rhys Ifans’ character and his family funny, especially from hearing the song in one of the trailers. The ABBA dance number with Venom and Peggy Lu as Mrs. Chen in Las Vegas is a lot to be desired, but there you are. 😐

There’s also Juno Temple as Dr. Teddy Payne, Stephen Graham returns as Patrick Mulligan from the second movie, Clark Back stars as Sadie Christmas, Alanna Ubach stars as Nova Moon, the wife of Rhys Ifans’ character, and Andy Serkis stars as the villainous Knull.

I wish I could say Andy Serkis as Knull impressed me in this movie, but he doesn’t do anything in the film, so what’s the point? There’s also Hala Finley as Echo and Dash McCloud as Leaf, the children of Rhys Ifans’ character Martin Moon and of Nova Moon. 🙂

I did like that scene between Eddie and the boy Leaf where they talk about being scared and whether aliens are real or not. It’s ruined by Venom speaking to Eddie at the end, but I do appreciate the scene being there and I wish that it added more to the film’s credibility.

Reid Scott, who previously played Dan Lewis (Not the Dan Lewis from ‘Doctor Who’, thankfully) in the first two ‘Venom’ films, provides the voice of the head of Imperium a government operation at the site of the soon-to-be-decommissioned Area 51 in the film.

So, yeah. As you probably guessed beforehand, ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ didn’t really impress me when I checked it out at the cinema recently. But that shouldn’t really be a surprise, as the ‘Venom’ film trilogy didn’t really do it for me and it was very disappointing.

I’m glad this is the final film in the ‘Venom’ film trilogy, as I don’t want to see any more ‘Venom’ films with Tom Hardy playing the character. I still rate Topher Grace as Venom in ‘Spider-Man 3’ highly than what the actual ‘Venom’ films with Tom Hardy have given us. 🙂

Please let there be no more ‘Venom’ films with Tom Hardy in ‘Sony’s Spider-Man Universe’ in the future. And I hope ‘Kraven the Hunter’ will be the last film in Sony’s universe of ‘Spider-Man’ spin-off villain movies. 🙂 Here’s to the fourth ‘Spider-Man’ film, starring Tom Holland.

Thanks for reading!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂