1 of 5 | Eddie (Tom Hardy) and his symbiote have a heart to heart. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 23 (UPI) — In three Venom movies, they never figured out the tone. Venom: The Last Dance, in theaters Friday, throws so many new elements at the franchise that it distracts from whatever scant parts of the first two that worked.
Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) returns from the multiverse, but cannot go back to San Francisco because he is still wanted there. So Eddie and his symbiote alien companion (voice of Hardy) decide to visit New York, but they never get there.
Apparently, because the symbiote brought Eddie back to life in a previous movie, that created a codex. The codex alerts Knull (Andy Serkis) where symbiotes are, so he sends his other aliens to hunt those symbiotes.
The symbiote has to hide his powers for much of the movie, but suggests he will ultimately have to separate from Eddie to prevent Knull from finding Earth. The notion of separating the Venom duo is valid for a third part, though expecting this to be an emotional goodbye is a bit of hubris.
Were that the focused story, Venom: The Last Dance could have had some fun, but it dumps so much more in there. Dr. Payne (Juno Temple) is researching symbiotes at Area 51, which is apparently going to be decommissioned in three days.
General Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is hunting symbiotes and doesn’t care much for Payne’s research. Eddie also meets up with Martin’s (Rhys Ifans) family, humoring Dad with a trip to see Area 51 before they cover up all the totally real aliens.
The Last Dance really wants viewers to care about the super serious symbiote apocalypse plot. At their best, Venom movies are fun for the absurdity of Hardy doing dialogue with his disembodied self, animated with super powered tentacles, not for the gravitas.
Some of the plot is handled so randomly, it is jarring. Minor characters react to the potential end of the world if Knull’s aliens find Venom, but the main characters are too busy with exposition to let it bother them.
The best Venom set pieces the trailer promises wind up being totally insignificant to the plot. Venom merges with a horse and rides atop an airplane, but both sequences only serve to transport Eddie from scene to scene, so they don’t pay off.
To say a Venom set piece is too random may seem redundant, but in one he engages full codex powers, this super important thing they’ve established they absolutely cannot do. They blow it for a random dance number.
“Venom dance number” sounds way more fun than it actually is, but at least it, like the horse and plane, are ideas. Aside from those three, most of the movie takes place in generic superhero movie locations like nondescript deserts or in the underground lab beneath Area 51.
Martin’s family is intended to provide some humanity, but the film never manages to engage it. The idea is Martin’s wife and kids don’t believe in aliens, and Eddie has to pretend he doesn’t, but they don’t know they’re actually giving an alien hitchhiker a ride.
The bond is superficial and ultimately is only a ploy to add more bodies to the final alien showdown.
All of this is new material introduced in the third film. The Last Dance pays lip service to threads left dangling in previous entries, only to contrive this new thing that is supposed to make a meaningful conclusion.
And even though there are some irreverent touches befitting of Venom, there’s no avoiding that the film does want viewers to feel something about Eddie and his partner’s journey. Instead of embracing the absurdity that made the first two Venoms popular in spite of themselves, The Last Dance tries to be something both unmotivated and baseless.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
Star Tom Hardy arrives on the red carpet at the “Venom: The Last Dance” premiere at Regal Times Square in New York City on October 21, 2024. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
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