Eddie Brock's Not Good, Very Bad Hangover - A Review of 'Venom: The Last Dance.'

With the release of the third Venom film, Marvel makes a valiant effort to assign a backstory to a symbiote living in the body of Tom Hardy.

The film intersperses flashbacks to a symbiote revolution that once occurred on their home planet and establishes the alien species as a migrant community looking for safety. The dark and villainous design of Venom’s world is a decent attempt at creating a more sympathetic character in the anti-hero, and for explaining the necessity for his position on earth.

Juno Temple plays a promising Dr Payne, a NASA employee following her brother’s dream. Payne has a compelling empathy with the symbiotes she studies, but her incessant mentioning of her brother makes her character sometimes irritating to watch. A questionably scientific flashback shows her brother dying from a stroke of lightning that causes the loss of her arm, with one of the symbiotes commenting that she is ‘broken.’ When she merges with a symbiote at the climax of the film, it ‘fixes’ her disability - an incredibly interesting and somewhat offensive take on physical disability which left a bad taste in the viewer’s mouth.

Despite this, the film provides a wholesome and humorous gaggle in the family of hippies who take Eddie on a road trip. The film incorporates the 2019 meme of ‘Area 51’ as an aspirational landmark in the father’s dreams. The most moving scene in the film incorporates this family, an acoustic guitar, morose revelations on the desire for fatherhood, and Space Oddity by David Bowie. The beloved character of Ms Chen makes a sparkling cameo, showing off her and Venom’s choreographed dance to Dancing Queen by ABBA.

Besides these two dazzling soundtrack choices, the film ends in a supposedly sentimental but actually corny and laughable montage of Eddie and his symbiotic partner that ruins the entire film. The importance of the bond between Eddie and Venom is often heart-warming and slightly romantic, which is an impressive feat of acting from Hardy - who plays both characters. Venom: The Last Dance is a humorous and somewhat enjoyable film, but it does not stand out in this incredibly mediocre Marvel era – can someone tell them to put the multiverse down?!