By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Sometimes, superhero movies are at their best when they are just as unhinged as the comics they are adapting. Sadly, the MCU has gotten so used to playing things safe that a brand-new Captain America movie just came and went without seemingly anyone (critics or general audiences alike) really caring. Fortunately, you can still turn your brain off in the best possible way and experience truly bonkers superhero cinema by streaming Venom: The Last Dance on Netflix.
Venom: The Last Dance On Netflix
When you watch Venom: The Last Dance on Netflix, you’ll find a film that picks up where we left off, with Eddie Brock (Venom’s alter… or should that be altered ego) still on the run after his previous battle with Carnage. When a fresh murder gets pinned on Eddie, he’s ready to travel to the Big Apple in order to clear his name. But it doesn’t take long for him to run afoul of a brand new enemy, one who is quite literally out of this world.
Venom: The Last Dance is stupid fun, but it has a better cast than most of the action schlock on Netflix. For example, this film features the immense acting talents of Andy Serkis (best known outside of the Lord of the Rings films for his role in Rise of the Planet of the Apes and its sequels) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (best known for 12 Years A Slave, but we loved him best in Serenity). But the real star is the always game Tom Hardy (best known to genre fans for Inception and his starring roles in The Dark Knight Rises and Mad Max: Furiosa).
It’s something of an open secret that Sony’s other attempts to create a cinematic universe of Spider-Man characters (including Morbius, Madame Webb, and Kraven the Hunter) have become major box office bombs. But well before Venom: The Last Dance landed on Netflix, this antihero cash cow earned a tasty $478.9 million against a budget of $110-$120 million. It’s unlikely to get a direct sequel because this film caps off the trilogy, but Tom Hardy hasn’t fully ruled out reprising the role, and fans will be happy to know that the movie introduces a new character that is meant to be a going concern in future films.
As to how good Venom: The Last Dance is, opinions are (a bit like Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote) divided. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a critical score of 40 percent. In general, critics praised Tom Hardy’s performance but complained that the film’s confusing tone kept it from sticking the landing like a symbiote sticks to its host.
A 40 percent score is troubling low, but get this: the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a whopping 80 percent. Audiences generally raved that the movie is a killer send-off for its titular character and that it channeled the kind of ‘90s vibes that transformed an entire generation into Marvel fans. In short, filmgoers of a certain age are confident that if you’re a big fan of the 1994 Spider-Man animated series, you’re likely to dig this film and its fan service-y post-credits scene.
So, if the low critical score of Venom: The Last Dance has you wondering whether or not to stream it on Netflix, you should know that the vast majority of people who saw this symbiotic sequel really, really liked it. And nobody should be that shocked that this movie (which, again, was a commercial blockbuster) didn’t appeal to critics, a group that has historically disdained both superhero and horror films. The Last Dance is a bit of both, causing out-of-touch critics to hate the movie for the very qualities that general audiences love it for.
So, will you love Venom: The Last Dance as much as I did when you check it out on Netflix, or is this one film you’d rather feed to an angry cosmic horror? You won’t know until you stream it for yourself. If you’ve been waiting for a superhero film as beautifully insane as the comics you fell in love with as a kid, then face it, tiger…you just hit the brainrot.
