YMMV / Clerks III

• Adorkable: Elias, as much as ever. He's still a virgin and apparently still lives with his parents in his mid-30s. After he converts to Satanism, he wears a different over-the-top Goth outfit in every scene for the rest of the movie.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Caitlin almost never gets mentioned during the filming scenes, and some lines mentioning her in the original were altered. Did Dante request that Caitlin be left out of Randal's movie? Or did Randal think adding Caitlin's traumatizing incident in the Quick Stop bathroom would have been in bad taste? They did mention the guy who died in the bathroom that was the cause of Caitlin's breakdown.^note  The actress who played Caitlin died in 2017, so her part was most likely omitted out of respect of the actress out of universe.
  • Is it a true act of friendship for Randal to re-edit his movie to be about (one day in) Dante's life, and then sneak into his hospital room to show him at the very end of Dante's life, or was he not listening when Dante told him the last thing he wanted to do was relive his life? Supporting the former was how Dante didn't have a problem with his life being used for the plot of Randal's movie until they started filming scenes at Mooby's. And if it's the latter, was Dante trying to turn off the laptop when Randal took his hand?
  • Is Dante's friendship with Randal an underlyingly sweet and mutually supportive partnership between an Odd Couple, or is it (as Dante always ends up expressing whenever he loses his patience with Randal and tells him off—throughout the entire trilogy) a toxic relationship with a narcissistic asshole who holds Dante back?
• Awesome Music: “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance playing over the opening credits.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Randal became a victim of this trope to many after this film. Some still feel that he just was under pressure of getting his movie made and Took a Level in Jerkass because of his near-fatal heart attack while others consider him an irredeemable Jerkass mainly because of the way he treated Dante throughout most of the film and even yelling at him for refusing to go to Mooby’s which in turn kicked off Dante’s rant that caused him his heart attack which he died from, leading to some considering Randal responsible for the death of Dante.
  • Dante himself could qualify. Some sympathize with him mainly because he’s distraught over losing Becky and is trying really hard to make Randal’s movie completely turn out great and keep him happy after he nearly died whole others find him an annoying crybaby in this movie due to the fact that all he does is whine about how he lost Becky when he's had sixteen years to move on, his over the top rant towards Randal being too over the top, and how he is still willing to forgive and trust Randal after he gave him a heart attack and was rude to him.
  • Blockchain is either an amusing sidekick to Elias or a completely pointless character who is only there for Kevin Smith to parry some jokes about crypto.
• Broken Base: Dante dying of a heart attack at the end. It's either heartbreaking due to how poignant and unexpected it is, while others find it pushes the film firmly into Too Bleak, Stopped Caring territory and makes the entire trilogy one big Shoot the Shaggy Dog story.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans like to pretend the Clerks saga ended with the second movie due to this film's brutal Happy Ending Override.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson pull off some of their best work as Dante and Randal here. In particular, Dante's Despair Speech near the end of the movie and Randal's anguished cries begging Dante not to leave him when he realizes Dante is dying.
  • Trevor Fehrman as Elias knocks the Moment of Awesome listed below out of the park, with frustration and hurt so genuine, he makes you feel all of it.
• Moment of Awesome: When Randal callously decides to leave Dante at the hospital to work on the movie, Elias finally gets fed up with Randal's behavior and explodes at him for mistreating Dante and getting so caught up in the movie. Especially cool to watch because Elias completely drops his nerdy demeanor and even outright curses Randal out for being a bad friend to Dante.
  • During his "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Elias tells Randal that the only reason Randal's movie even got funding was because Dante gave his ex Emma his half of the Quikstop as collateral. This causes Randal to realize what a jerk he was being and as a gesture of atonement, he edits his movie so that Dante can be the protagonist. And since the final product was a duplicate of the original Clerks, it means that the truest depiction of the first film in the Askewniverse all boiled down to Elias growing a spine.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Veronica returns after being absent from the last movie, and it looks like she and Dante were going to rekindle their relationship. Unfortunately, apart from a few cameos during filming for Randal's movie and Dante's funeral, she only plays a pivotal part in one scene. This was somewhat acknowledged by Smith during a con panel, when he said that Veronica's scene was intentionally written to be completely optional, so that he could cut it if need be, but Marilyn Ghigliotti wowed him so much with her performance, that he vowed to keep it in no matter what.
• The Woobie: Dante was emotionally scarred by the death of Becky and their unborn child. When the sight of Mooby's triggers him, he gets drunk, fights with Randal and gives himself a heart attack from the stress. Unlike Randal who had a smooth recovery, Dante doesn't make it.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: As mentioned above, some feel this way thanks to how utterly brutal the ending is. Becky and her unborn child are dead, having been killed by a drunk driver shortly after the events of the second movie. Dante is an embittered man who has lost the will to live and eventually dies of a heart attack shortly after telling off Randal for being a shitty friend. Randal after being a selfish bastard throughout the whole movie gets to live 40 years without Dante essentially alone without the man who had stuck with him through thick and thin. And Elias has lost his innocence and become a satanist.