Movies

Venom: The Last Dance, starring Tom Hardy, Juno Temple and Chiwetel Ejiofor
Trailer: Sony / Columbia Pictures

Venom: The Last Dance
Directed by Kelly Marcel
Rated PG-13
Chomped 25 October 2024
#Venom

The Last Dance squanders the Venom series’ last chance to do something great with its characters.

Find My Symbiote

Here’s the big problem with the Venom (presumed) trilogy: it wastes one opportunity after another to tell a meaningful story or at least evoke genuine emotions.

Eddie Brock is a great character, a groundbreaking investigative journalist, a daring man who needs to restore his professional credibility. His life is decimated by the introduction of a symbiote from outer space. As part of the fallout, he loses the love of his life, Anne Weying (they managed to snag Brokeback Mountain A-lister Michelle Williams for that role, at least for the other two movies). That relationship was a key part of the glue that made the first Venom almost good. And, of course, Tom Hardy is Eddie. Tom (Mad Max) Hardy. A-list actor. And – three times now in the Venom series – a squandered A-lister.

The series devolved rapidly with Let There Be Carnage, which had virtually no compelling human elements.

With The Last Dance, there’s a faint attempt to introduce some scraps of humanity by way of a few new cast members (yet more A-listers!) that include Juno Temple (The Offer) as Dr. Payne. She has something near to an interesting back story. (Let’s call it "interesting adjacent.") And there’s an alien-seeking hippie named Martin (Rhys Ifans, The Amazing Spider-Man), who’s van-lifing his family (branded with granola names: daughter, Echo; son, Leaf and wife, Nova Moon) to Area 51 in hopes of catching a glimpse of some aliens before the government decommissions the storied facility.

Another top-notch cast member, Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things), is – shocker – underused in a standard military general role as Rex Strickland.

At least conspiracy theories (such as Stanley Kubrick directing the moon landing) and what lies beneath Area 51 – Area 55, the symbiote laboratory – dot the narrative landscape with some much-needed thematic color.

Dark Forces

The human element is a hallmark of Marvel’s best, and DC’s best, for that matter. Throw in a story grounded in some sense of reality or current events and the movies’ power turns super. It’s not a surprise non-MCU titles are often problematic (also from the Sony/Columbia shingle are the reviled Morbius and Madame Web), but even the MCU itself has hit the skids with klutzy narratives that have turned that envious, unprecedented cash flow into a mere drip.

What’s still missing in this third, climactic episode is more of Eddie the human, Eddie the journalist seeking redemption and pushing to expose the truth (it’s out there, after all). Eddie literally has a monster living inside him. That’s interesting. So why is Eddie such an uninteresting character? It doesn’t help a lot of his situation is played for laughs (the Crocs are cute; the hangover jokes are tiresome) and it can be really awkward watching Hardy verbally (and physically) joust with a creature – his symbiotic split-personality – that’s rendered with only so-so CGI. Regardless of how things play out in the comic books and graphic novels, reset the possibilities for the big screen (and big budgets featuring big names). Those big names should include Spider-Man, of course, but not here. Not a single frame.

It’s not a spoiler to say Eddie’s given an ultimatum as the mayhem winds down: speak nothing of what’s happened with his symbiotic life or he’ll be plunged back into government-sponsored exile.

The government censoring a journalist. Now there’s a hook that’s not just adjacent. It’s interesting.

The Codex and the Crocs

Here’s the hard part to stomach: most of these problems seem to be Hardy’s own doing. He co-wrote the stories for Carnage and Last Dance with Venom series screenwriter Kelly Marcel, who also makes her directorial debut this time around.

She does fine as a director; it’ll be interesting to see where she takes that career path. Even so, it’s the story that’s the problem.

Last Dance picks up right where Carnage left off, with Eddie in Mexico. But there’s a tacked-on prelude involving a nasty, long-haired character shrouded in darkness. That’s Knull (Andy Serkis, The Lord of the Rings trilogy), who’s sent his Xenophage minions to Earth in search of the black symbiote containing the codex, the key to Knull’s freedom. It’s a lot of fantasy jibber-jabber that never, ever creates a shred of menace, even as those nasty-looking Xenophage literally shred all beasts they encounter in a comic-book-gruesome display as the victims’ blood spits out their backs like a wood-chipper.

This time, the mayhem moves from Mexico to the Nevada desert, then to Las Vegas for a disjointed casino sequence, and finally to Areas 51 and 55, where dark forces conspire to split Eddie from Venom. It all leads to an oddly sentimental ending reminiscent of one of those music videos stuck in the middle of a 1980s Rocky movie. Capture a whole bunch of danger and fun-loving memories (Yo, Venom!) and gulp down the sugared drink that strains to make the trilogy look good in retrospect.

In keeping with the tradition of Marvel’s better movies, Last Dance offers two mid- and post-credit scenes. Both are merely teases of some future story element, but neither is exciting. In some respects, they’re more sad than fun. Sad in how they seem hell-bent to follow the path of sameness.

More uninspired menace and no heart.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.

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