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The stupid Alien trilogy is finally over
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The stupid Alien trilogy is finally over

Film review

VENOM: THE LAST DANCE

Running time: 109 minutes. Rated PG-13 (intense violence and action sequences, bloody images and strong language). Friday at the cinema.

See you then, “Venom.”

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

After six years and three miserable films, “Venom: The Last Dance” finally ends the indescribably stupid comic book film series about a disturbed San Francisco newspaper columnist who becomes host to a clever alien symbiote.

Based on Donna Summer’s disco hit: If it’s bad, it’s so, so bad.

Box office-wise, the trilogy has proven to be the crown jewel of what Wikipedia calls “Sony’s Spider-Man universe,” a Marvel outcast collection that also includes such dark garbage as “Madame Web” and “Morbius.” .

One of life’s great mysteries is that “Venom” has grossed more than $1 billion worldwide. There are people, especially in China, who actually like it.

Venom returns for the final time in “Venom: The Last Dance.” AP

What do these masochistic ticket buyers get for their $20 in “The Last Dance”?

A migraine, but I digress.

You’ll see Venom whipping up a strawberry margarita in a Mexican bar while “Tequila” plays on the radio.

You’ll watch the alien head to Las Vegas and perform a choreographed dance to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock then questions the crazy logic of his own film and says, “When did you practice that?”

Venom, Eddie Brock’s alien symbiote, is hunted by the evil Knull’s henchmen. AP

You’ll hear the deep-voiced symbiote, which looks like a scary Power Ranger, reveal his dream of moving to New York City.

“I’ve always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty,” says Venom, who hails from the planet Klyntar in the Andromeda Galaxy. “And a Broadway show!”

You learn more about Venom’s love of horses. “Oh! “Horse, horse,” the brain-eating alien coos.

You will be amazed that Juno Temple as Dr. Teddy Payne blinks – in a performance that borders on CGI – less than ten times in this 109-minute film.

They can’t contain their mocking laughter as Venom, Eddie and a family of UFO-hunting hippies sing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in an old van.

Juno Temple and Chiwetel Ejiofor play Dr. Payne and Strickland. AP

And oh, will they be amazed by the highly imaginative plot? At the start, the villain – a dejected blonde named Knull (Andy Serkis, ka-ching!) – says he needs a device called the “Codex” to escape his space prison and control the universe.

A villain needs a vague object? Unprecedented.

“It’s the key to my freedom,” he screams in writer-director Kelly Marcel’s superhero script “Mad Libs,” before sending several other symbiotes to Earth to find him.

We learn that the Codex is inside Venom.

You don’t say that!

The film begins in Mexico and moves to the American Southwest. AP

Brock, hiding in Mexico because the government mistakenly believes he killed someone, must evade both the deadly visitors and the U.S. agents pursuing him, including Rex Strickland (an exhausted Chiwetel Ejiofor).

The friends then head to Las Vegas, where Venom loses all their money on the slot machines and a drunk man urinates on Eddie.

Eventually they end up in a secret laboratory beneath Area 51 in Nevada, cleverly named…Area 55. There goes Dr. Temple’s Payne goes about her trade and tries to open her eyes.

Eddie and Venom land in Las Vegas, where they meet Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu). AP

The climactic battle at the base between a group of Venom-y symbiotes and Knull’s four-legged henchmen, who resemble the aliens from “A Quiet Place,” is blob-on-blob action. Static and unexciting. The heroes lose for 10 minutes, and then they win in an instant.

Hardy excels at playing crazed lunatics who would make you cross the street if they came at you. We don’t particularly like Eddie, don’t find him interesting, and don’t care about his future. We never did that. But we notice that he is shaking and speaking quickly.

The ending is meant to stir our emotions, and it does wake you up: relief that it’s over.

Venom seems broken unless he pulls a Michael Myers. But in the post-credits sequence, the villain Knull, whose story hasn’t even been resolved yet, dramatically says that his routinely evil work isn’t done.

Great. To quote one of the film’s many unforgettable characters: “Why is this happening?”

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