Venom 3: The Last Poop

It’s times like these that I’m just glad we got to watch the old movies of the past. And by old, I mean from the early 2000s, which feels like a lifetime away at this point, but man, oh man, were they something that felt special and different in a good way. Like the movie Spider-Man 3: the first and only time to date that I’ve enjoyed getting to see the anti-hero character of Venom being played.

Because when you see what they’ve done to him nowadays, it’s like that scene from The Godfather with Don Corleone just reminiscing about how dirty his enemies have done his poor boy.

Venom: The Last Poop, I mean the Last Dance, is easily one of the worst films I’ve seen this year. It feels so bafflingly strange to me how this film was put together. It’s genuinely baffling. The plot of this movie has so much more potential, and I hate to say that because I always feel like this is the case with big-budget superhero movies like these, which is pretty much what I’ve always felt with Tom Hardy’s Venom franchise. On the surface, this movie has the potential to expand the lore of the symbiotes and villains of this crazy alien world and to give us maybe even some genuinely interesting showdowns with final bosses or, at least, a setup for a future dynasty. Moreover, the heart of this movie also had the potential to be that one last emotional hurrah for Tom Hardy and this rendition of Venom. It could have been fun while also incredibly bittersweet.

But far out, they stunk it up on both ends.

The weirdest part about this whole movie is some of the storyline choices, dialogue exchanges, and overall pacing/editing, which, to me, ruin all these interesting, potentially good aspects of the film. There are way too many scenes that come across as completely awkward or unnecessary, and I just sometimes shake my head at what’s going on.

And I’ll go into some spoiler talk now, so please be warned. Ok, 3, 2, 1, let’s go.

We open up with a strong, no-fuss introduction to an unknown villain who seems to be the Thanos of this world. I was surprised to see it starting so quickly without any studios opening logos, but this was awesome. A refreshing mixup. It gets things going pretty quickly, which is always nice.

And then it changes into a weird song edit towards the South American vibe because we’re watching Eddie Brock being stuck in some bar in Mexico, except it doesn’t go anywhere. It becomes this scene about him deciding to go to New York City to blackmail the mayor or congressman to help free himself as a fugitive. Still, the whole dialogue exposition to himself is just so off and awkward and sounds completely dumb. I just don’t get this plan or where it came from, and it feels like some child wrote this whole scene because it’s overly explaining things in the most basic, dumbest ways.

But we then get nothing from this multi-verse crap either, which is thrown away extremely quickly in this scene, even though it was meant to be a huge reveal at the end of the last one that he was going to be joining the bigger MCU universe. Still, then nothing happens from it, and it’s meant to be a whole joke about how the multiverse stuff sucks.

For the next half hour or so, we just watch him save the cat by freeing up some locked-up dogs, killing some gangsters and then being hunted by the FBI or some government task force who are tracking down symbiotes.

This then goes into this whole other spiel about Area 51 being decommissioned, except there’s Area 55, which is studying these symbiotes and is figuring out that there’s going to be more of them potentially coming to Earth to get this cortex/key from Eddie and Venom that will eventually free this new super villain.

And at this point, you start thinking, okay, this kind of makes sense is setting up something interesting now and wow, okay, so it looks like we’ll hopefully see more than one type of Venom symbiote being released, which is awesome. But then we get these weird ass scenes of Eddie taking over a horse, riding it and then being attacked, going through some strange moral dilemmas after killing someone in self-defence that feels like a bit out of the left field and are never touched upon again to then meeting a wholesome family travelling out to Area 51 to see some aliens as a sort of one last farewell and selling all your life savings to accomplish your dream type of idea.

Which is just like…what? What am I watching here? I don’t find things like horse riding funny, but if you enjoy that, sure. I sort of find it interesting seeing Eddie Brock question his ethics after performing self-defence, but I don’t get why it’s brought up there in the first place and then thrown away so easily soon after.

I also can’t show you all of the awkward dialogue exchanges throughout this part of the movie.

What’s so weird is that one of my favourite parts of this movie is seeing Eddie Brock in the caravan hanging out with the genuinely wholesome family, who go into this rendition of David Bowie’s song Space Oddity. I was partly expecting an edit to the next sequence, but the whole scene just holds on to it for an extended period, and the whole song was beautiful. It was like you’re hanging out with them for a bit, and it was nice. Didn’t expect it.

But then it changes completely the next moment, and then we’re in Vegas doing a weird-ass dance sequence to see a weird-ass showdown in Area 55. Ya da ya da ya da, the movie ends with Venom sacrificing himself, even though I don’t know if it was necessary to do so because the creatures that were chasing him and Eddie were blind unless Venom fully took over, so just don’t do that and continue to live your life in a smaller capacity but still existing and just walk away so who cares if they are still coming cause they obviously only really care about you. Still, I guess Venom has to die, so we get an emotional montage sequence at the end, and that’s it. Roll credits.

And if you thought this review had come to a screeching halt and didn’t give you any emotional or logical payoff, then that is exactly how this movie felt.

I have no idea why Tom Hardy made these movies, apart from the obvious monetary benefit. Maybe he, too, had higher hopes for them from a potential plot point of view. In either sense, I’m just glad it’s finally over, but I wish I could have had my six hours of life back.

Weirdest…franchise….ever.

THE END.

YouTube Review here: