The Sony-shared universe of Marvel films has mostly been misses, and I’m sorry to say that Venom: The Last Dance isn’t the exception. The trilogy capper is a grab bag of half-hearted franchise-building attempts that, overall, feel a little too late.
Venom: The Last Dance is the feature directorial debut of Kelly Marcel, a creative who’s been responsible for the script of all three films in the Venom trilogy. Marcel has been known to be a longtime collaborator with star Tom Hardy, even going so far as to receive a special thanks for script work on 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. So, this directing job feels like a long time coming for the writer. However, that only makes the quality of Venom: The Last Dance that much more unfortunate, as this final film in the trilogy barely has any semblance of a narrative. Instead, the film comes across as a disjointed and scattered story about Eddie and Venom coming to terms with their inevitable separation.
Taking place immediately after the events of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, The Last Dance sees Eddie Brock and Venom returning from their incredibly brief stint in the MCU and resuming their life on the run. The duo decide to go to New York and resume their Lethal Protector gig there, but their plans are put on hold when a creature known as the Xenophage arrives on Earth on orders from Knull (voiced by Andy Serkis). As it turns out, Venom saving Eddie’s life at the end of the first film created a Codex (a way to free the imprisoned Knull) inside the Lethal Protector, causing Knull to send his Xenophages to retrieve Venom and Eddie.
The intergalactic attention Eddie and Venom receive also earns them the ire of Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) a soldier in charge of a task force that captures Symbiotes. When you add to all this the fact that Venom and Eddie can’t fully transform because they attract the attention of the practically indestructible Xenophages, you have a potentially hilarious premise as Eddie and Venom attempt to take a cross-country trip to New York.
What follows is yet another buddy comedy superhero film, only this time in the form of a half-hearted road trip. The Venom movies have earned the reputation of being trashy fun, earning impressive box office returns despite the overwhelmingly negative critical reception. There is a clear interest in Tom Hardy’s unhinged and incredibly physical performance as Eddie Brock as well as the voice of Venom. However, whereas Hardy’s whacky and hilarious performance was front and center of the first two films, Venom: The Last Dance makes the character take a backseat whenever the dragging B-plot comes into play.
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Whenever we’re not seeing Eddie and Venom’s antics (which is for a little less than half the film) Ejiofor’s Strickland and new character Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) are at the forefront of an exposition-filled snooze-fest. Stephen Graham’s character from the first two films, Patrick Mulligan, was teased as becoming a symbiote host himself at the end of Let There Be Carnage who is a part of this plot point as well. Unfortunately, this amounts to nothing but a bloated cameo. Mulligan becomes a boring exposition machine, as Temple and Ejiofor’s characters mostly just stand and listen.
Despite being marketed as a conclusion for Venom, The Last Dance is surprisingly interested in franchise building in the worst way possible. Knull, a relatively new comic book villain that’s grown in popularity over the years, is clearly the newest target of the team at Sony to build as the big bad for their tangled symbiotic mess of a cinematic universe. Cue the random inserts of Knull brooding on his throne throughout the film, never really meant to do anything but wink and nod at the camera that he’ll be back as a villain if this film is successful.
Knull’s inclusion in this film is perhaps its biggest detriment, as his minimal onscreen presence undoubtedly led to the lack of an actual antagonist. Whereas Woody Harrelson’s Carnage and Riz Ahmed’s Riot provided a tangible threat with amusing characteristics that added to what people enjoy about the Venom movies, the Xenophages are an empty, soulless threat. Venom: The Last Dance strives to do what the previous two entries didn’t with worldbuilding and setup and faces the consequences for it similarly to the ill-fated Madame Web and Morbius.
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Thankfully, there are still some surreal and outrageous scenes that evoke the tone of the first two Venom films. Whether it’s a musical sequence involving Venom singing “Major Tom” or the Symbiote having a choreographed dance sequence with Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) in Las Vegas, there are hints of a more absurd and genuine Venom film in this lackluster final installment of the trilogy. It doesn’t help that, besides Mrs. Chen and Patrick Mulligan, there are no other returning cast members from the previous two films. In the place of the usual cast is a hippie family led by their father Martin (Rhys Ifans), who are seeking out aliens. They’re hilarious enough, but – and I hate to overstate it at this point – they are drowned out by all the Sony world-building nonsense.
The entire affair leads to a misguided CGI slugfest in the third act, with plenty of Symbiote surprises that might make this movie worth your time. By the end of it all, Venom: The Last Dance drags itself across the finish line, but not without making the story seemingly all for naught with two credit scenes that undo the stakes of the film. Despite the film’s best attempts to up the ante in terms of Venom romps and hilarious situations the character finds himself with his unique powerset (Venom Horse can do no wrong), this third film ends this already mediocre trilogy on a lower note than it should have.
Venom: The Last Dance is now playing in theaters.
Published: Oct 24, 2024 11:09 pm