Everyone loves an antihero. When the standard black-and-white depictions of good versus evil get boring, it’s always fun to shake things up with shades of grey and follow the protagonist with a heart of gold and knuckles of brass. Marvel fans of the morally ambiguous have been blessed twice this year, first with Deadpool & Wolverineand now with Venom: The Last Dance.
Venom: The Last Dance starts by closing the multiversal loop the MCU started in the post-credit scenes of Venom: There Will Be Carnage and Spider-Man: No Way Home. After being pulled into the mainline 616 Marvel Universe, Eddie Brock and Venom (Tom Hardy) are sent back to their universe (sadly without ever interacting with Spider-Man) only to find that they are wanted fugitives falsely accused of the murder of Detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham). Naturally, the pair decide to flee to New York from Mexico, where Eddie has a contact who still owes him favours from his journalism days and can hopefully help clear his name.
At the same time the police are hunting him for murder, a secret government agency studying the Symbiotes and operating from Area 55, a hidden base below Area 51, is on the hunt for the duo to capture Venom. For good measure, intergalactic prisoner and creator of the Symbiotes, Knull (Andy Serkis), is another third party after Venom and Eddie, seeking control of the “codex” they possess, which will free him from his prison.
The Last Dance is a fun movie and a good time at the theatre. The early reviews I saw were negative to lukewarm, so I went into it expecting to be disappointed. However, in the end, I couldn’t help but have fun and smile. The bickering buddy dynamic between human and alien that Hardy has developed over the past two Venom films is as charming and goofy as their shenanigans. Much of this is a little formulaic and recycled like when people are confused when Eddie speaks to Venom aloud or when Venom chaotically makes food (though this time, it’s at a bar and not in a tiny apartment kitchen).
Still, there are moments of originality, like seeing Venom possess different animals or live the high life in fabulous Las Vegas. Aside from the action, these scenes are the main draw of a Venom movie, and I wish there were even more of them. Unfortunately, many of these moments are already shown in the trailers, almost in their entirety. I’m looking at you, Venom horse.
The action sequences are a highlight of The Last Dance. Given Venom’s moral ambiguity as an antihero, it’s always fun to see the duo emphasize the “lethal” in their “lethal protector” nickname while other characters refuse or are hesitant to cross that line. In instances like this, the franchise would have benefitted from pushing for an R-rating to benefit its action and story rather than seeking to maximize the box office potential.
Despite the fights mainly being centred around CGI, they’re well choreographed with a good variety of movement between Eddie and Venom. Chase scenes provide a necessary variety to the mano-a-mano slugfests we’re used to between Venom and hapless goons or aliens. However, much of this film’s carnage is reserved for the Xenophages gobbling things up and ejecting them in a fine bloody mist. More on them later.
*SPOILER ALERT*
The best of the action comes at the film’s climax when Area 55’s menagerie of Symbiotes finally fulfills their Chekov’s gun moment and take over random scientists and soldiers to help combat the attacking Xenophages. I enjoyed seeing the different physical traits each possessed to make them physically distinct. For example, the blue one has a tail, two Symbiotes combine to create a two-headed entity, and one has super speed.
However, I wish this had happened sooner and that we’d had more time to explore these Symbiotes’ personalities and see them in action a bit more than the few precious seconds that a few of them get. It also made me question why Venom is a kind of plain and vanilla if all these Symbiotes have unique traits and abilities.
The big alien battle is the satisfying comic book kerfuffle that we expect from action movies, especially the superhero genre. Lots of things blow up, and there are casualties left and right. It resolves with an emotional scene befitting the end of a trilogy. It’s the dumb, mindless CGI fun that makes us go to these kinds of films in the first place.
*SPOILERS OVER*
The Last Dance is available to see in regular 2D, 3D and 3D 4DX, but as cool as the concept of seeing Venom extend his giant gloopy fists in 3D may seem, you’re better off going with the regular 2D. In 3D, the combination of CGI, quick camera movements and the 3D effect sometimes make the action on screen too jumbled and chaotic to see what is going on.
I watched the film in 4DX RealD 3D. At specific points, the motion of the seats was enjoyable. It enhanced the experience, like gently floating around during aerial sequences, the subtle rumbling of the cars while driving, and the Venom horse’s exhilarating galloping. However, for most of the film, the loud air puffs from gunshots were very distracting, and the excessive jostling during action sequences made me wish I had a seatbelt.
The parts of the movie that focus on Venom and Eddie are when the movie is at its best, but unfortunately, the story shifts its focus a little too much. At the end of the Venom trilogy, I wanted and expected more alien/human buddy time. Instead, focus is diverted to the internal conflicts in Area 55, which are arguably necessary to the plot, and a side plot about a road-tripping hippy family hoping to catch a glimpse of aliens at Area 51 before it is destroyed. Though Rhys Ifans is lovably goofy as the spacey Martin, this part of the story is unnecessary and feels shoehorned.
That leads to my major complaint about The Last Dance: everything is disjointed. Hardy teamed up with director Kelly Marcel, the only returning writer from the first two films, to work on the script, and it feels like they simply divvied up the scenes and slapped them together. Shots of the lead duo squabbling back and forth and Eddie getting his feet peed on by a drunk casino goer feel radically different and almost from a different movie than the scenes of Area 55 scientist Dr. Teddy Paine (Juno Temple) and General Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) clashing about the ethical treatment of the alien Symbiotes.
I don’t mean to imply that there isn’t room for complex discussions and topics like this in a Venom movie. I welcome emotional and philosophical complexity in my punchy-punchy superhero fare to make a more balanced viewing experience. However, the key is to blend these with a sense of tonal coherence and not simply cobble a few scenes together and call it a day.
Another pain point is the highly disappointing villain. While the trailers and the movie set up Knull, played by a criminally underused Andy Serkis (who also directed the previous Venom film), as the big bad, he’s only in the movie in snippets, sitting in a chair. It’s reminiscent of the Thanos post-credit teasers from the early MCU. Instead, we’re forced to watch Eddie and Venom contend with the giant alien Xenophage, which can pull its body back together and come back to life no matter what kind of damage or dismemberment it encounters.
This seemingly unkillable enemy may raise the stakes for our protagonists; but it makes for a terribly bland villain, especially following on the heels of Riz Ahmed’s Carlton Drake and Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Cassidy/Carnage. Ejiofor’s Strickland is much more serviceable as the antagonist/pseudo-villain, driven by a single-minded mistrust of alien life and the need to protect the planet from the threat they pose.
Hardy, Ejiofor, and Temple do the heavy lifting regarding acting. Hardy is as excellent as ever with his sweaty, dirty, messy, and overwhelmed version of Eddie Brock, which perfectly counters his exuberantly snarky Venom. While the depiction of their relationship is more diluted than the chaotically adorable rom-com-esque tone it had in Let There Be Carnage, Hardy still works his magic and shows his serious acting chops here.
Temple and Ejiofor are similarly strong human foils as Paine and Strickland. Though more subdued than her work in Ted Lasso, Temple’s character still contains traces of that same bubbly optimism as she advocates for kind treatment of the Symbiotes. As Strickland, Ejiofor is all business, advocating for an understandable cautious militarism towards the Symbiotes, though also showing a level-headed willingness to cooperate with them to take down a common enemy. They take a delicate dance between optimistic scientific pursuit versus pragmatic realism, which is compelling to watch but feels both out of place and underserved by the film’s writing.
As the closing chapter of this Venom trilogy, The Last Dance falters in its steps but ultimately manages to shuffle to the end of its swan song serviceably. Hardy once again demonstrates the mastery of his craft by juggling the contrasting personalities of Eddie and Venom, and the film’s action scenes scratch that itch to see aliens throwing down against other aliens. The lack of compelling villains and the inconsistent tone throughout the movie keep it from being as good as its predecessors. Numbers fairly dance it, and I just couldn’t shake off the feeling that I wanted more of Eddie and Venom’s stupid misadventures and less of everything else.
The end credit sequences leave room for the deadly duo to return for future films, and Hardy has confirmed that he is excited to revisit the characters whenever he gets the call from Marvel. If and when we see Venom again, I’m more than happy to sit my butt down in a non-4DX seat. These beloved characters deserve a better ride off into the sunset than this.
Rating: 6.5/10