Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

The “Venom” trilogy undoubtedly has many of the same issues as its counterpart, Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. The series is rife with mind-numbing visual effects, bouts of meaningless exposition and endless table-setting for future installments. But where “Madame Web” and “Morbius” are unacceptable disasters, the “Venom” movies display a self-awareness that encourages you to laugh with it. After all, none of those other movies feature Tom Hardy doing funny voices.

“Venom” and its sequels focus on the low-stakes buddy comedy adventures of the loud-mouthed, trash-talking alien symbiote Venom which has bonded to the uptight Eddie Brock (both played by Hardy). Their endearingly juvenile relationship, with silly dialogue that would get most writers expelled from film school, is a refreshing, unpretentious alternative to the chaos of the SSU and the self-seriousness of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Yet the pleasures of these “Venom” movies aren’t nearly as prevalent in “The Last Dance.” While Venom and Eddie’s dynamic is just as wacky as ever, the comedy that distinguishes “Venom” from the other Sony superhero movies is de-emphasized by an ultra-serious plot with vague world-ending stakes.

“The Last Dance” opens with an unfortunate exposition dump from the film’s antagonist, Knull (voiced by Andy Serkis, who also directed the prior “Venom: Let There Be Carnage”). Surrounded by miscellaneous CGI space monsters, the symbiotes imprison Knull — the creator of symbiotes like Venom. Knull must retrieve the Codex to regain control of the universe. The Codex is forged when a symbiote resurrects its host like Venom does when Riot fatally wounds Eddie in the first film.

Neither the Codex nor Knull are established in the previous movies, of course, because “The Last Dance” needs to manufacture a reason for it to be the “ending” of the trilogy. Because the Codex can only exist when the host and the symbiote are alive, the film suggests that Eddie or Venom might die to save Earth from Knull’s invasion.

The exposition doesn’t stop there. We learn that the duo, calling themselves the “Lethal Protector,” are still on the run after their battle with Carnage. The murder of Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham) has been pinned on Eddie, so they must travel to New York City to leverage Eddie’s previous journalism contacts to clear his name.

Additionally, villains from their respective worlds chase the pair: Knull, who sends alien monsters called Xenophages to retrieve the Codex, and Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a soldier who oversees a lab in Area 51 for studying other symbiotes.

Strickland interrogates Mulligan, who survives after being bonded with another symbiote by Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple). Strickland learns of the threat Knull poses from Mulligan’s new symbiote and sets out to eliminate Venom and Eddie to destroy the Codex.

The film drags to a halt with this B-story focused on Mulligan, Strickland and Payne. Why does Payne have a traumatic backstory about losing her brother as a child to a coincidental lightning strike? Who wants to see this?

None of these characters are interesting, and they take away from the weird antics of the Venom and Eddie storyline, which is the primary appeal of these movies. Compared to the Carnage subplot in “Let There Be Carnage,” where Woody Harrelson’s cartoonishly evil Cleetus Cassidy primarily wants to kill Eddie and Venom, the Area 51 characters and Knull merely pad out the runtime.

Amid these slow patches, there is still some “Venom” magic. Though the story involves end-of-the-world stakes, the first handful of action sequences are fairly simple. The first fight scene, for instance, involves Venom and Eddie fighting low-level gangsters to save innocent dogs from a dog fighting ring. This scene has little bearing on the story, but the fact that it’s here grounds the main characters.

In the film’s best stretch, the misfit duo find themselves in the back of the van of Martin Moon (Rhys Ifans), an alien obsessive driving his family to Area 51. When Martin plays “Space Oddity” on his guitar for his family, Venom exclaims “This is my jam!” and starts singing along, much to Eddie’s annoyance.

This van scene gets to the inherent humor in Venom and Eddie’s relationship, which should’ve been a more exclusive focus of the film rather than bland sci-fi exposition.

As Venom and Eddie watch the deserts of Nevada pass by from the van’s window, they reflect on how far they’ve come. Shockingly tender moments are sprinkled throughout Venom and Eddie’s bickering in “The Last Dance,” as these are two lovable screwups who learn to recognize how much they need each other.

Sadly, much of the earnestness in “The Last Dance” comes at the expense of the comedy that made the first two “Venom” movies work. The homoerotic rom-com tropes that defined Venom and Eddie’s relationship in “Let There Be Carnage,” such as Venom claiming to have come out of the “Eddie closet,” are sorely missed here. But they do refer to each other as Thelma and Louise at one point — at least the bromance is still there.

The film’s direction is also not on par with its predecessor. Serkis, the Gollum and Caesar actor-turned-director, is accustomed to working on projects with heavy visual effects. His action scenes are well-lit and exciting, whereas Marcel’s handiwork is much less legible. Marcel sadly sets much of the action in dark, plain locations where colors don’t pop. Venom and Xenophages often blend and are difficult to distinguish.

Thankfully, lighting isn’t as prominent of an issue in the early gangster scene or the daytime water rapids chase, and some of the later action scenes showcase exciting interactions between Venom’s symbiote tentacles and the environments of the fight scenes.

With “Let There Be Carnage,” Serkis, Marcel and Hardy correctly realize the strength of these movies is when Venom and Eddie bicker with one another and fight goofy supervillains like Carnage. It’s disappointing to see Marcel take a regressive step back with “The Last Dance” into self-serious territory, though there are moments when it shines.

“The Last Dance” contains many of the flaws of your run-of-the-mill superhero movie, but has enough funny and even soulful passages that make the whole “Venom” journey feel somewhat worth it by the end.

Published on October 28, 2024 at 11:03 pm