Readers of mine know that for years I’ve been saying Sony screwed up by loaning Spider-Man back to Marvel Studios after a pair of okay-ish Amazing Spider-Man movies. Ultimately, it’s a deal that has worked out for both sides, and Sony seemed to be set up nicely following the success of Venom in 2018. The delightfully weird superhero comedy was more of a buddy comedy that gave Tom Hardy the chance to show his lighthearted side, something he hasn’t often done. But the sequel, Let There Be Carnage, wastes an iconic Marvel villain with an atrocious story, and the box office plummeted as a result. Morbius and Madame Web turned out to be embarrassing flops, too, with a dire outlook for Kraven the Hunter. Now, with Venom: The Last Dance bringing the franchise to a close, the bar has been lowered enough it’s excusable that it’s not very good, either, because at least it has the balls to be off-the-chain nutty, a goopy send-off to the oddest couple in all of Marvel.
The Venom movies have gotten progressively crazier as Hardy has become more involved on the creative side. It’s like Hardy looked at the first film, scratched his chin and thought, “Why so serious?” The Last Dance is a barrage of human-to-symbiote banter and bizarre visual gags. Your mileage will depend on how funny you find the exchanges between Hardy’s Eddie Brock and the head-chomping, chocolate-loving, dancing symbiote nutjob Venom. Based on a story by Hardy and screenwriter Kelly Marcel, who takes the sole writing credit and makes her directorial debut, the film benefits from a relatively brief runtime and acceptance of its lowbrow nature. These movies have never felt overly serious or part of some larger cinematic universe that needs to be fed. Being able to sit back and indulge in the goofiness and “what the fuck???” antics goes a long way.
Needlessly, the film begins with Eddie and Venom still stuck in the Multiverse, after one of the worst post-credit scenes ever in Let There Be Carnage. Fortunately, they’re only there long enough to confuse the poor bartender (returning actor Cristo Fernandez), and upon returning they immediately get into enough trouble to become fugitives from the law. We’re made aware, through clunky exposition, that their death in the first movie has triggered a “codex” within them that has alerted Knull (voiced by the prior director Andy Serkis), father of the symbiotes, who was imprisoned by his children ages ago. Now he wants out and needs the codex to do it, so he sends a bunch of hunters that look like aliens from A Quiet Place to track Venom down. If he can let them out of his prison, why can’t he just leave himself? Whatever, don’t go down that road.
This sets off a road trip of sorts as Eddie and Venom make their way cross-country, where they get into a series of misadventures that are comically hit-or-miss and involve Marvel actors playing entirely different characters. Rhys Ifans, who was The Lizard in Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man movies, plays the patriarch of an alien-obsessed family eager to check out Area 51. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karl Mordo in the Doctor Strange films, plays Rex Strickland, a stock hardass military man in a covert operation to destroy the symbiotes. With Michelle Williams finally realizing she’s got better shit to do than this, the major female role goes to Juno Temple as scientist Dr. Payne, whose fascination with the symbiote (caused by a past tragedy we don’t need to know about) puts her at odds with Strickland. The highlight of this journey finds Venom leaping from animal to animal; a Venom horse, a Venom fish, and even a Venom frog which would be cool if he had to fight Throg, the frog version of Thor.
Most of these subplots amount to very little, as Marcel’s scattered screenplay both attempts too much and nothing at all. There’s just not a lot of inspiration here, and Marcel, whose biggest break was writing the painfully flat Fifty Shades of Grey, just isn’t a writer who does comedy very well. There are jokes that go absolutely nowhere, like a recurring gag about Eddie’s footwear. If there’s a character who has been treated best throughout the franchise it’s San Francisco convenience store owner Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu), who pops up here randomly in Las Vegas, and waltzs the night away with Venom to the sounds of “Dancing Queen”. Meanwhile, Knull doesn’t really do anything but sit in a chair and sulk, making him the lamest villain ever. He’ll reportedly have a bigger role down the line, but that’s assuming there is a “down the line” after this.
The final stretch does have one of the most exciting action sequences of the trilogy, with Venom and his symbiote brothers in a pitched war in Area 51 against Knull’s forces. Marcel and Hardy also attempt to inject some heart as Venom’s story winds down. It’s hard not to get sentimental over this antihero Jekyll & Hyde duo, bad jokes aside, when they hit us with sappy flashbacks and Maroon 5’s “Memories”. They did an amazing job of getting the Venom character right and faithful to the comics. Hardy has spent a good chunk of his career as Eddie Brock, and it’s clear he loves the freedom that playing him brings. While the comedy is often groan-worthy, we can’t help but applaud Venom: The Last Dance for letting its freak flag fly right to the very end.
Venom: The Last Dance hits theaters on October 25th.
