Venom: The Last Dance: The Off-Balance Review.
Third time's the charm - ideally.
While the vast majority of superhero/superhero-adjacent movies can be neatly categorized, the Venom films really are their own beast.
Traces of body horror, campy slapstick and led by a bromance that doesn’t shy away from its more romantic overtones.
A wholly off-the-wall formula that allowed the first Venom movie to become one of 2018’s surprise hits, despite both relative critical indifference and being beholden to the modern corporate behemoth.
See, to the uninitiated, these movies are not apart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) but rather, what is known as the SSU: Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.
The end result of Sony’s expansive deal with Disney/Marvel Studios which has featured Tom Holland as Spider-Man in the MCU since 2016 and pushed Sony to create their own live-action franchise: one primarily anchored by Spider-Man villains/anti-heroes… but without a Spider-Man and/or Spider-Woman to oppose them.
It is a framework that inherently invites innovation sure but has also proven itself to be, on some level, creatively bankrupt, with Sony’s two other stabs at SSU franchise-building (Madame Web and Morbius) being, outside of the memes, dead-on-arrival.
Anchored by Tom Hardy though, the Venom movies have proven themselves to be, besides all that behind-the-scenes wrangling, if nothing else, an enjoyable time at the theatre.
Compared to its predecessors however, the third (and supposedly final) Venom outing, The Last Dance, led by writer-director Kelly Marcel which released last week?
Despite the odd moment of memorability, it openly finds itself buckling under all that weight - that operating (and subjective) benchmark of “fun”, being something it too often struggles to clear.
After quickly cleaning up the post-credit scenes of both the previous movie and 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home (which, predictably, led nowhere) we return to Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his extraterrestrial buddy Venom (Hardy again) in something of a tough spot.
Following the events in San Francisco, Eddie has been branded a fugitive, wanted for questioning in the death of SFPD detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham). Not wanting to live on the run forever, he and Venom decide to make their way to New York City in an attempt to clear Eddie’s name.
But hot on their tail is Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) a government solider operating out of an off-the-books bunker in Area 51 and his colleagues, scientists (played by Juno Temple and Clark Backo) who have been studying symbiotes and their hosts: including a revealed, to-be-alive Mulligan.
Meanwhile, in a dark corner of the universe, the symbiote God Knull (Andy Serkis) has awoken. Seeking the “Codex” that is shared between Eddie and Venom, he dispatches his minions, symbiote-hunting goons known as Xenophages to retrieve it, whatever the cost.
And at the intersection of these three plot-lines is where The Last Dance finds itself. Wanting to be a road-trip movie, a melancholy buddy-comedy and a straight-up action outing: while ostensibly being the capper on a trilogy of which connective tissue has never really been the operating focus - something that, although Marcel and Hardy (who was once again given story credit) try otherwise to prove, immediately becomes apparent.
There are, to be fair, a few sequences that stand out.
Whether it is Venom and Eddie in a three-way fight between Strickland’s men and a relentless Xenophage or the duo enjoying something of a quieter, reflective moment along the road during their attempted cross-country odyssey.
Ultimately though, The Last Dance is nothing more than a means to an end that ultimately lacks the necessary narrative weight.
It isn’t entirely on Marcel, who, in her directorial debut (after co-writing/writing both Venom and Let There Be Carnage) is working within the confines of a very rigid studio framework - but there simply isn’t anything technically or creatively that distinguishes this movie from any of its big-budget superhero contemporaries of the last ten, fifteen years: serviceable CGI, building to a washed-out third act dominated by barley distinguishable, action-heavy sludge.
To this end, the supporting cast aren’t given anything of substance to work with either, besides being asked to bring cardboard cutouts to life.
Graham and Ejiofor both feel wasted, Ejiofor’s Strickland in particular, with motives the movie can hardly be bothered to explain and while Backo and Temple’s characters do fare better, it all feels so transparent.
Set-up for sequels and spin-offs that will probably never come to pass and with what little emotional investment the audience may have that feels not just unearned but discarded come the movie’s conclusion (for her part, Temple, in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, discussed the possibility of reprising her role in potential future projects).
Rhys Ifans and Alanna Ubach led a family of alien-enthusiasts that assist a hitch-hiking Eddie but there just isn’t anything there: their eventual role in the movie’s climax, dull and entirely predictable. Peggy Lu does return, briefly, as Mrs Chen an old friend of Venom and Eddie and brings a fun jolt of energy - if also a reminder that, without Michelle Williams and Reid Scott to round out the supporting cast, as they did in the previous movies (their characters aren’t even mentioned), the more “human” element that worked prior is mostly lacking in this final go around.
All of it, in some way, expected perhaps.
For the crux of the whole operation, full stop, is within the Eddie/Venom dynamic and just how much life Hardy can bring to it.
And sure, on one hand, their evolution feels believable. After teasing the “Lethal Protecter” angle for the better part of two movies, here now, at last, they’re finally able to work completely in tandem and the pay-off is nice. Eddie, trusting Venom (almost) without question. Venom, not shying away from the fact that he deeply cares for, even loves Eddie.
But even then, that milage can only carry things so far.
The movie was set-up as a finale to these characters but instead it, rather blatantly, leaves various threads open for a possible return down the line (something even Hardy has acknowledged) so that the ending, which is supposed to be emotionally hard-hitting, just doesn’t land when you realize Sony is simply counting their chickens. Hardy then, in both his dual-roles, is simply passable. Not bringing the intense commitment he is known for, the same that was so famously seen in the first Venom. Eddie is supposed to be burnt out and exhausted yes but Hardy just seems… tired.
If he really did want to put these characters on ice for a while, then his performance conveyed it. Not that he’s phoning it in necessarily but he comes pretty damn close.
Venom’s characterization, on the same hand, as it was in Let There Be Carnage, will probably be a matter of personal preference - but in continuing to move so far away from what the first movie established, it lands, once more, like a series of missed opportunities.
The big guy was funny in Venom that’s true but his humour was also appropriately contrasted by the fact that he was deeply intimidating, an unnerving presence every-time he not only spoke but appeared on screen. But as Marcel has acknowledged, Venom’s Odd Couple bantering with Eddie was, for better or worse, what really resonated with audiences: so in following suit, the Venom depicted in Let There Be Carnage was the complete antithesis of both his previous portrayal and virtually all other deceptions of the character, a vessel for comedy above anything else.
The Last Dance, given the nature of most of the proceedings eases back on this a touch but it doesn’t land as it was obviously intended too: this version of Venom, he’s just so goofy, man. Hardy has mused about potentially having the SSU and MCU properly cross over, as to set up a showdown between his Venom and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man but given how this version of the character has been written now, to this point?
It should be a hard pass.
Comic book readers will be disappointed too, with many elements of the movie (specifically everything with Knull) being clearly pulled from the Donny Cates written, Ryan Stegman illustrated Venom run but without any of the skill they both brought (one positive though, considering how CBMs often push the on-page creatives to the side is that both men were brought on as consultants).
It doesn’t do anyone good to mince words, no: while the first Venom was probably a perfect, modern-age B movie, its sequel went too far in the other direction and The Last Dance doesn’t end up much better.
A substandard if anticipated end to the most unexpected of trilogies, it visibly squanders any potential or small amount of promise the original film had, opting instead for weak comedy and disinteresting stakes.
Not even a cheesy good time, just the exact opposite: utterly forgettable.