Review of Venom: The Last Dance, a movie more like a comedy

  Hoping a third time is a charm, Venom: The Last Dance struts its’ stuff on the floor amidst the season’s horror movie surplus. The writer of the franchise’s first two installments, Kelly Marcel, takes the director’s chair for the first time, with star Tom Hardy joining her for the screenplay. Reflecting the magnitude of the Marvel momentum, Hardy was locked in as Eddie Brock for a three-picture deal before 2018’s Venom hit screens. The qualities of his character feel more dialed in. Marcel wearing two hats here produced a more cohesive piece that the previous films. While surpassing many of their counterparts at the box-office, Venomand Venom: Let There Be Carnage were dissected critically for their erratic pace and disconnection from the Spider-Man realm. 

We greet Eddie and his Symbiote BFF wading through Tequila in a Mexican bar while still on the run from American authorities, for the presumed death of Detective Mulligan (Stephen Graham, The Irishman). Right off rip, Marcel flexes the series’ strength of humor with Eddie’s fed-up rant about a certain purple antagonist who made half the population disappear with some silly stones. For The Last Dance, it’s not merely an element of comic-relief, but the vertebrate that braces the story. Venom declares how he’s “so done with this Multiverse $#!t!”, a cagey crack at a growing sentiment of many movie goers.

 After an altercation with some gangsters sporting catchpenny tattoos that clearly were not part of budget concerns, the two head to New York City to clear Eddie’s name, and see the Eiffel Tour, of course. It’s no smooth sailing trying to evade Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave) and his special ops soldiers. They learn the wicked creator of all Symbiotic beings, Knull, has sent his minion creatures to reap revenge in order to obtain the key to his freedom from otherworldly confinement. This means destroying Venom and Eddie both, presenting them with the most difficult decision of their newfound life together. 

A movie more like a comedy

What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. After a David Bowie sing-along road trip with Alien-obsessed tourists, the two are taken from Sin City to a military science lab in Roswell. There they find Mulligan still alive, being studied with other symbiotes by Dr. Payne (Juno Temple, Fargo). Driven by a curiosity and the painful loss of her twin brother, Payne is sympathetic to the symbiotes and their hosts, against Strickland’s apathetic matter-of-fact approach. Despite Stephen graham’s talents being nearly wasted, sadly, Mulligan warns what is coming for them all, with the historic site of extraterrestrial intrigue as the setting of the big showdown.  

Venom acts as Eddie’s alter ego of sorts, embodying an impulse to allow the archangel on our shoulder to control our wishes for a warped sense of justice, or just a desire to knock out a douchey drunk Vegas-goer. Hardy’s acting gets to shine, but whereas his chops couldn’t save the first two films from mediocrity, here the pieces of the picture puzzle fall into place, accentuating his performance. It plays more like a comedy than the usual comic book movie, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s the main ingredient that serves up the best offering yet of the franchise, and a reason to check out Venom: The Last Dance.

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