Let’s ‘Dance’
Kelly Marcel and Tom Hardy bring the Venom story to its conclusion exactly the way you think they will.
Venom: The Last Dance
Director: Kelly Marcel • Writer: Kelly Marcel, based on the Marvel comics
Starring: Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rhys Ifans, Patrick Mulligan
USA • 1hr 50mins
Opens Hong Kong Oct 23 • IIB
Grade: B-
Here’s the short version of what’s likely to escalate into some kind of nonsense ideological debate over the merits and sins of Venom: The Last Dance: Do you like Tom Hardy and his consistently witty voice work in Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage? Do you like the films’ not-too-self-serious tone? Then you’re probably going to have a good time at the series capper, Venom: The Last Dance. The End. Critics whining and whinging and spewing vitriol for the hell of it need to take up a hobby or something because Last Dance is exactly the film you expect it to be. It’s as shambling and unstructured as the first two installments – arguably part of their charm – but it manages to deliver a relatively satisfying finale. It’s not Logan, but it’s fine. To those screeching about how awful it is, I have six words for you: Borderlands and The Chronicles of Libidoists. So STFD and STFU.
Venom started life as weirdo and it finishes that way. If you can remember how journalist Eddie Brock/Venom (Hardy, duh) slots into the larger Sony Spiderverse – one of those films shot Eddie through the multiverse and dumped him in Mexico or some shit, it was so long and so many Marvel/Marvel-adjacent universes ago who can keep track – we pick up with him in a Mexican beach bar, where the TV tells him he’s wanted for the murder of Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham), the cop that tangled with Venom and Carnage in, erm, Carnage and got infected with his own symbiote. He’s also being pursued by macho-ly named Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a soldier connected to a secret military programme based at the soon-to-be-decommissioned Area 51 and the mad scientists who work there, Dr Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) and Christmas (Clark Backo). Finally, a pack of alien symbiote hunters unleashed through magic portals by discount The Witcher Knull (a mo-capped Andy Serkis), the symbiotes’ creator, are also after him. Knull’s currently in space jail and Eddie/Venom – who together make a “codex” – are the key to his release.
FML
The Last Dance, writer Kelly Marcel’s first film as director after penning the others as well as Saving Mr Banks (!), Fifty Shades of Grey (!!) and the pilot episode of TV series Terra Nova (!!!), which is the kind of bonkers network experiment that will send you to therapy, in many ways is the best Venom movie, possibly because it has an end game to work towards and partly because at this point Marcel and Hardy have hit their goofy stride. Last Dance is funny without being too snarky; CGI nutty without being too difficult to follow (it is, naturally, frenetic); respectful of its own pedigree as a film series without being fan service-y – and it doesn’t bend to audience demands. After leading with a weak villain in Riz Ahmed’s Carlton Drake/Riot and following with a slightly better one in Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady/Carnage, Last Dance essentially dumps the villain; Knull is a far off spectre for a potential spin-off whose absence allows for a laser focus on Eddie and Venom; two dudes in a bizarre friendship on a road trip to “clear their name” in Mulligan’s murder. They even stop in Vegas, where Hardy gets a hot minute to show off his James Bond test reel and Mrs Chen (Peggy Lu, who has the sweetest royalties deal of all time) gets one more jig. Point is, Marcel, Hardy and the rest of the cast are mostly just having a good time wrapping up the trilogy, to hell with Sony, the MCU, Spider-Man and everything else. Last Dance exists in a refreshing vacuum.
Jangly and half-baked as it can be, Last Dance still manages some truly inspired moments (“I’ve had it with this multi-verse shit!” and “He was acting like a dick!” are just a couple of Hardy’s pitch perfect line readings that might have larger meaning), among them bodies getting shredded and spit out the back of the alien’s head (yes, guy!). Most of the rest involve semi-retired hippies Martin and Nova Moon (Rhys Ifans and Alanna Ubach) and their kids driving Nevada’s Extraterrestrial Highway (this is a real thing) in a classic, tie-dye VW van. They stop and pick up a broken down Eddie and proceed to regale him with alien conspiracy theories and how they’re on the way to see Area 51 before it closes. The high point is a sing-along to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, a relatively still and quiet moment where Eddie ponders his regret over a lack of lasting human connection; Eddie’s journalist job is jettisoned completely, there’s zero mention of his old girlfriend Anne (Michelle Williams), Unfortunately, five hours and change into a six-hour series is a bit late for consideration of an anti-hero’s emotional stakes.
Existential stakes are quite another story, however, and Venom: The Last Dance does a decent job of upping them, as Strickland and Payne come to realise just how big a threat Knull’s henchcreatures pose to life on Earth. Ejiofor and Temple have no significant jobs other than looking concerned, though Payne seems set up to be symbiote Agony. Whatever, it doesn’t matter, because as the other films were, Last Dance lives and dies by Hardy’s unhinged, lumbering, sloppy performance and he’s in fine, hungover form to send off the character. Sometimes weird really is wonderful.