Skip to main content

Venom: The Last Dance review – messy sequel ends series with a shrug

Tom Hardy’s agreeably silly Marvel franchise wraps things up in a patchy final adventure that needed a tighter, and funnier, script

The recent, long-awaited, cratering of the superhero movie (with a notable Deadpool-sized exception) has led to a mad scramble – release dates pushed, marketing strategies tweaked, Robert Downey Jr bribed – and a concerned question mark over what the future might hold for Hollywood’s most commercially lucrative contemporary genre. The Venom franchise, which launched in 2018 to surprise success, had already felt like a throwback to an earlier time – a glossy and light-hearted burst of mid-00s nostalgia – but now, with its third and final chapter releasing at such a fraught time, it also feels like a reminder of a more recent time when these films used to mean more to audiences.

Whether or not something like Venom: The Last Dance will jolt enough of a response remains to be seen (the second film saw a $350m drop at the global box office and the third is tracking for a franchise-low opening) but it’s at least a smartly planned conclusion to an inoffensively silly and low-stakes series, Tom Hardy and his quippy alien symbiote leaping off a sinking ship with a spring in their step. It’s not as catastrophic as Madame Web or as redundant as The Marvels or as annoying as Deadpool & Wolverine, it’s just about passable in a throwaway kinda way, blessed by a surprisingly brief runtime that doesn’t allow it to grate or exhaust. If only it amused and excited us a little bit more.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/18IPZMS
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

England booed off after failing against Iceland once more in Euros warm-up

It was a long way from being the triumphant Euro 2024 send-off for Gareth Southgate and his England players at a sold-out and increasingly fretful Wembley. Never mind the result because it was not the main thing, however much it stirred memories of you-know-when against Iceland. It was the performance that raised the difficult questions, the worst one for quite some time and at exactly the wrong time. The home fans, thousands of whom made for the exits before the end, were forced to watch the second half – from about minute 55 onwards – through the gaps between their fingers. And it had not been great before that. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/4ndfQL0
Post a Comment
Read more

Manchester City in title driving seat after cruising to win at Leeds

The title stare-off becomes steelier with each week. Elland Road was at its raucous best and a highly motivated Leeds played well enough to ensure Manchester City rarely neared full stride. Nevertheless the leaders mastered the situation, showing they can win via set pieces when means of higher aesthetic merit elude them. Rodri and Nathan Aké proved the point with goals in each half, garnished later by Gabriel Jesus’ sixth in three matches and a Fernandinho daisycutter, and Pep Guardiola’s delight at the outcome was obvious. This had been a possible banana skin, with the potential leveller of such a highly charged atmosphere; instead City cruise on and Leeds, who are in genuine danger of going down, must seek more viable routes to safety. This encounter had an edge from the outset. It needed to, because the heat had been turned up on both teams. City would have expected Liverpool to achieve what was necessary at Newcastle; Leeds might not have banked on Burnley’s turnaround at Watford...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bins ‘overflowing’ in parts of England as Covid hits collections

Staff sickness in areas including London, Gloucestershire and Somerset leads to waste services being scaled back Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage Bins across parts of England are reportedly “overflowing” with rubbish from the festive period due to Covid-related staff shortages. London, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Buckinghamshire are among the areas where councillors have warned that bin collections are being scaled back because of staff sickness. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3qIHK0C
Post a Comment
Read more