RECENT WATCHES: Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

I know I say this every time the topic comes up but it truly bears repeating: Sony's decision to build a cinematic universe around their half of the Spider-Man character rights – which excludes the use of Spider-Man himself – has got to be one of the most legendarily bad ideas that Hollywood has spawned in the last decade. This extremely executive-brained premise has, for the most part, gone exactly how you'd expect. It turns out, the world was not clamoring for movies starring the vampire that fights Spider-Man sometimes and the origin story of the co-worker of his uncle. However, there has been one major exception to this on-its-face awful idea for a franchise. The "Venom" movies were successful. Some have tried to argue that they were good too. The relative box office popularity of "Venom" and "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" continued to fuel Sony's delusional thought that Spider-Man Movies Without Spider-Man In Them were a smart investment. Tom Hardy's apparent enthusiasm for the character has also kept this series moving forward. Nothing lasts forever though. The unlikeliness of Spider-Man's ooziest archenemy fueling one movie, much less two, surely dawned on someone. Thus, the choice was made to cap this series as a trilogy last October. "Venom: The Last Dance" announced its finality in that subtitle, in so much as any of these superhero universes are allowed to end. 

Following the events of "Let There Be Carnage" – which, I'll admit, I remember very little about – Eddie Broke and his symbiote buddy are fugitives wanted by the law. A top secret government task force, based in the secret-ier lab underneath Area 51, are on their trail. Hard-ass military professional Rex Strickland only wants to eliminate the symbiote threat while Dr. Teddy Paine hopes to study them, including the several specimens already in captivity in the lab. That's not the only thing after Eddie and Venom though. The primordial darkness God and creator of the Symbiotes known as Knull is imprisoned on the alien's home world. He seems a special codex that Venom carries, which can set him free. The only way to destroy the codex is for Venom or his host to die. Knull sends a horde of monsters known as Xenophages after the duo, who now have multiple forces after them as they attempt to make it to New York City. 

This we mustn't forget: The "Venom" movies have always been bad. Perhaps that's an overstatement but the previous two entries had deeply uninteresting screenplays, awkward action scenes, usually underwritten supporting characters, and weak villains. "The Last Dance" sees series screenwriter/nepo baby Kelly Marcel promoted to the director's chair. What this largely means is that the esteemed adapter of "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Saving Mr. Banks" can clearly be seen taking full control of the "Venom" universe. While being a half-assed version of the popular "King in Black" story arc, "The Last Dance" has a plot mostly made up of stupid bullshit. Dr. Paine's backstory is dumped on us via an awkward flashback/dream sequence. The plot introduces multiple elements with grave importance – a role for the comic character Toxin, Eddie taking a life, an omniscient secret observer watching everything – before forgetting about them a few scenes later. That the thrust of the story is based around some universe threatening MacGuffin, one of the hoariest clichés of would-be blockbusters, is a good example of its creative bankruptcy. It has a villain who sits around in a chair in space, imprisoned but massively powerful, who does nothing but brood ominously. Absurd plot devices, such as a big tank of sulfuric acid, are gratuitously introduced with as much prominence as possible, to make clear that they will be important later. Venom makes it clear that he can't fully transform without alerting the Xenophages before doing it anyway. An utter head-scratcher of a scene has the slimy alien monster appearing to save Brock in a way I don't think is possible. In other words, "Venom: The Last Dance" has a cobbled together story that is beholden to hacky clichés, tiresome foreshadowing, and generally can't be bother to respect the audience's intelligence. 

Kelly Marcel's parents are the director of "Hawk the Slayer" and the star of a long-running BBC drama. She's also good friends with Tom Hardy, explaining her involvement with this series. What she definitely isn't is a competent action director. "The Last Dance" is shockingly visually incoherent at times. Action scenes often become hard to follow thanks to the choppy editing. A shot of Venom kicking a slot machine – which looked fine in the trailer! – is rendered awkward thanks to the spasmodic editing. This is, perhaps, the fault. of editor Mark Sanger. His previous credits include some bad James Bond movies, some bad Tim Burton movies, a bad Transformers movie, and inexplicably two of Alfonso Cuaron's best works. This is paired with often murky cinematographers from Fabian Wagner, who has mostly worked on television. Film is a collaborative medium and something looking like shit is result of many hands. However, Marcel still probably deserves blame for the film's utterly goofy conceptions of what a cool action scene is. We've got soldiers dangling from a helicopter for some reason, a hard-to-follow scuffle in a raging river, an improbable battle atop a passenger jet, and the less-than-serious sight of Venom cruising around on a motorcycle. It's all shows a deeply miscalculated understanding of what is cinematic and what looks striking. Unsurprisingly, "Venom: The Last Dance's" climax is a flurry of CGI slime monsters and explosions, the kind of rapid fire action filmmaking that leaves the viewer utterly numb. 

Some may take me eviscerating "Venom 3" for having a garbage story and shitty visuals as a surefire sign that I am a stuck-up, humorless dweeb. Which probably isn't wrong. However, let the record show that, there are several stretches where "The Last Dance" tricked me into believing it was a good time at the movies. As with the previous two entries, this is entirely thanks to two factors: Tom Hardy's compellingly weird leading man energy and the willingness to play Eddie Brock and Venom's relationship for goofy laughs. Broke spends the first act of the film drunk and most of the rest of it hungover, surely a decision that was Hardy's idea. The star's commitment to playing this guy as an awkward loser is shown in the repeated humiliations he suffers, from getting peed on, repeatedly thrashed about by his alien friend, and wandering the desert in goofy cowboy boots. Hardy eventually concedes to the expected star charm, putting on a tux and barking orders during the destruction filled climax. However, he still carries the movie upon his broad shoulders for most of the runtime. He certainly has no help from the apathetic supporting cast, which includes a visibly confused Juno Temple and Chiwetel Ejiofor phoning it in harder than he's ever phoned it in before. 

As for Brock and the symbiote's homoerotic brolationship, the scenes focused on that represent "The Last Dance" at its most entertaining. Far from the corrupting influence and single-minded sociopath of the comics, the symbiote's cinematic counterpart is a source of wacky comic relief. He possesses a horse, the moment the sequel most embraces its silly, Saturday morning cartoon feeling. A shouted-along participation in a David Bowie sing-along or an inspired dance number to ABBA, all much to Hardy's annoyance, are scenes of goofy, chaotic fun. These films have, in spite of their weak writing, managed to get the audience attached to Eddie's attachment to Venom. The attempt at playing their bond for pathos is ridiculous... And it almost works, entirely thanks to the investment Hardy has put into imbuing his misfit hero and his oozy boyfriend with humor and eccentricity. The result is an overly sentimental final scene, which is as hokey as it seems. However, on the rare times the sequel puts aside its doofus storytelling and visual incoherence, I did laugh and enjoy myself. A slapstick heavy buddy comedy is hiding within this lumbering, preposterous attempt at a blockbuster. 

Despite the superhero bubble popping so hard in the last year and change that a number of should've-been surefire hits have plummeted, it would seem that audiences remain hooked on Eddie Brock's weirdo bond with a strangely attractive goo monster. "The Last Dance" has continued this series' run of doing so much better at the box office than anticipated. This means surely that two, related events will follow: Despite the sense of finality etched into every frame of "The Last Dance," we'll probably see Venom on movie screens again soon enough. This also means that Sony execs will likely continue to delude themselves into thinking there is a demand for a Spider-Man-free Spider-Man Cinematic Universe. God help us all. Tom Hardy's charisma and an off-kilter sense of humor about itself is ultimately not enough to save "Venom: The Last Dance" from being tedious big budget sludge. [5/10]