Venom: The Last Dance - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray [SteelBook]

While the MCU proper has been able to thrive in recent years, albeit with a few bumpy entries, Sony’s Spider-Man Universe hasn’t had the best luck. Sure, the animated Spider-verse films are great and the Tom Holland flicks were impressive adventures - can't take anything from those films, they're great. Everything else Sony threw at theater screens in recent years has been a hilariously memeable morbin spiders-in-the-amazon box office bust. That is except for the three Venom films. 

2018’s Venom was hardly a cinematic masterpiece, but it introduced the characters well enough, had some fun action scenes, and most importantly made some serious box office bank. Venom: Let There Be Carnage certainly had the entertainment factor with a swift pace and loads of action, but it didn’t really expand this franchise’s world and once again, kept our titular alien away from his main adversary (or ally depending on your comic panel of reference) Spider-Man. But after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, we got a tease that this big meeting would take place, and soon! What better time than the third and final film to have Venom meet Spider-Man, right? Can’t fault you for assuming that’d be the case, but evidently that payoff will have to wait for another film.

No, for Venom: The Last Dance we see Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) hiding out in Mexico after the events of the previous film (and making a trip through the multiverse). Alien-hunting government shadow forces are on his trail as he tries to find a safe haven to figure out his next moves. Dr. Teddy Paine (Juno Temple) wants to study the multi-colored alien Symbiotes. Commander Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wants Brock and all of the Symbiotes dead. Making the situation all the more urgent, imprisoned intergalactic nemesis Knull (Andy Serkis) has sent out his minions to find Venom so he can break out of his confinement and unleash hell upon the universe... Or something like that.

Taking the reigns of this outing is Hardy’s longtime friend and collaborator Kelly Marcel. On top of directing duties, she co-wrote the story with Hardy. She was an understandable choice to sit in the director's chair considering she and Hardy handled the same Story/Writing duties on Let There Be Carnage and she had a hand in 2018’s Venom screenplay as well. While there’s talent to spare on this project, the how and where the story goes only highlights Sony’s directionless approach to their stable of Spider-Man characters.

Upfront and out of the way, I didn’t think The Last Dance was as bad as Morbious, Madame Web, or the deliriously stupidly silly Kraven. That said, this isn’t a good film either. With laws of diminishing box office and story returns in full effect, the film suffers a lot of clunky meaningless exposition theater with tons of aimless padding. “Oh, Juno Temple’s Dr. Paine has a backstory?” Don’t care, don’t need it, doesn’t have a real payoff. “Wait, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Strickland also has a backstory?” Don’t care, don’t need it, doesn’t have a real payoff.

And while I love Ejiofor, he’s a phenomenal actor, but what the hell is he doing here if he’s not playing Mordo? I get it, some actors get to float between universes, especially since this is not in the MCU proper, but it’s odd. Adding to the randomness of the casting is a beared-up hippie-looking Rhys Ifans. Is he logically playing Dr. Connors AKA The Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man: No Way Home? Nope, he’s just an alien-obsessed hippie who dragged his family to see Area 51 and likes to sing Bowie songs. But What about an important character like Knull? Well, Knull is virtually nill. 

Thankfully the final climactic battle shows some energy and a sense of direction and aim, but for most out there, it’ll probably be too little too late. But then again, this might not be the final film. Look carefully at how they bill The Last Dance as “the final film of the trilogy.” Will we see Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock with his number-one pal in a future film? Maybe in Secret Wars. If I was a betting man I’d say the MCU proper and Sony are probably hard at work to merge their properties for that one. If they’re not they should be. If this is actually how Sony ends things with Hardy and Venom it’s only more evidence they had no clear direction beyond blindly throwing cinematic spaghetti at the audience to see what stuck.  

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
Venom: The Last Dance does the two-step on physical media for a two-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital SteelBook release. The 4K is pressed on a BD100 with a BD50 disc serving up 1080p and Bonus Features. The discs are housed in the steel book with overlapping trays, but with enough clearance they shouldn’t rub up on each other. The discs load to Sony’s standard main menu with a basic navigation system and bonus features along the right side of the screen.

The plot and story might not be the clearest picture, but Sony delivers another excellent Dolby Vision transfer for their star non-Spider-Man Spider-Man franchise. Details are sharp and clear right from the get-go. From the scenes in Mexico to the back of Rhys Ifan’s van to the Las Vegas strip, This is a sharp-looking feature. Big-stage visual effects like the fight outside of an airplane looked impressively well-rendered and stood up well on high-resolution home video. Facial features and costumes are all well-defined. Depending on the scene, colors are big and bold, especially the different colored Symbiotes for that big final battle. Some of the CGI effects are a little less effective than others, a few look pulled out of a last-gen gaming console (pretty much anytime CGI Tom Hardy appears), but otherwise, they stand up to scrutiny. The Dolby Vision grade is nice and vivid highlighting those strong primaries while offering ample attention to black levels and contrast. It’s a big sparkly pristine-looking flick and makes for a pretty terrific 4K transfer. Slipping over to the Blu-ray, the 1080p offers a nice view, certainly well detailed, but misses out on those HDR enhancements, and doesn’t nearly offer the same level of image depth. But if 1080p is how you roll, it’s a good way to go too.

On the audio front, Venom: The Last Dance stays true to the franchise with a rip-roaring Atmos mix. Of course, the standout is Venom’s gravelly internal monologue voice and how that extra rumble knocks into the surround channels. The humans could be having a nice simple conversation and then whomp! there’s Venom’s comment. Jarring but in a fun way. As for the rest of the track, it’s a pretty action-focused film and so the mix stays true to that offering plenty of dynamic channel-specific highlights. Height channels are well-prioritized, expanding the feel of the big locations like the Vegas casino but also drop some exciting overhead action. The big chase sequence in the river, the whole final act are all big action-paced sound stages for this mix to play with. Levels were on point, so no issues there. Dialog was clean throughout without any trouble spots. Music cues were right on point, even for that ridiculous dance scene or when a family of hippies started singing Bowie.

Now for the 1080p fans, the Atmos seems to be exclusive to the 4K disc, the included standard Blu-ray only sports an effective but lacking-by-comparison DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. It works, it’s certainly good at what it is, but it ain’t the Atmos. 

On the extra features side, we have a collection of mostly EPK snippets. There are a few focused segments like the look at the action and stunt scenes, but nothing’s very long or in-depth. All frosting no cake sort of material. Interesting, but nothing insightful. 

Blu-ray Disc:

• Venomous Laughs: Outtakes & Bloopers (HD 2:29)
• Author of Mayhem: From Writer to Director (HD 5:49)
• Venom Unleashed: The Action and Stunts (HD 5:21)
• Bonded in Chaos: Tom Hardy (HD 6:02)
• Venom’s Inner Circle (HD 6:23)
• Brock Bottom: Mrs. Chen Interview (HD 3:25)
• Savor the Last Bite: The Venom Legacy (HD 4:40)
• Deleted & Extended Scenes: (HD 12:29 Total)
• From Bar to the Abyss
• Dog Fight
• Strickland Pursuit
• Venom’s Guilty Pleasure
• Toxin’s Warning
• Penthouse
• Xenophage Landing 
• Select Scenes Previs
• One Last Dance- Tom Morello & Grandson (HD 2:37)

The best I can say about the Venom franchise is it's been divertingly entertaining. Not great. Not a knock-your-socks-off example of comic book moviemaking, but fun. By the close of Venom: The Last Dance, I realized the worst thing about this franchise is after three films, it didn’t really accomplish anything. It didn’t break new ground. Worse, it didn’t live up to its potential. The Last Dance sashays to 4K UHD from Sony. The film might not be the best, but fans will surely enjoy the excellent Dolby Vision transfer and Atmos audio mix. Bonus features might be a tad thin but there’s a few interesting tidbits but nothing particularly insightful. The deleted scenes were the most interesting bunch of the lot. Yeah, I had fun with Venom: The Last Dance, but I can’t say I fully enjoyed it either. As I said, a divertingly entertaining film that looks great on 4K, but is not likely to win over newcomers. For Fans Only
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