The “Sony Spider-Man Universe” bungles on – still notably not featuring Spider-Man, nice! – with Venom: The Last Dance (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video). It’s the third movie in the Venom “trilogy,” and allegedly the final one, hence that title, although star Tom Hardy probably could be talked into taking another fat pile of dough to star in a fourth. And now I find myself staring down the loaded double-barrel of a conundrum, wondering what I can say about a third Venom that’s unlike what I said about the first two (in a nutshell: they sucked bung), especially considering that they’re all quite consistently stoopid despite cycling through different directors – Ruben Fleischer for 2018’s Venom, Andy Serkis for 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage and co-writer of all three, Kelly Marcel, making her directorial debut for The Last Dance. Whether this grand finale is worth the zillion hard drives of CGI data required to make it is what we’re going to get into here, although at this point y’all can probably hazard a good strong guess.
The Gist: The location: somewhere in a computer full of CGI that’s just begging to be deleted, and yes, I’m doing the begging. This is where dwelleth Knull, God of the Void (Andy Serkis), lives, and he declareth, “I AM KNULL, GOD OF THE VOID!” so there’s absolutely no doubt that we’re dealing with Knull, God of the Void here. “FIND ME THE CODEX!” he bellows, before sending a monster across the outer spaces to Earth to fetch it. Has he no better means of acquiring a MacGuffin than a snarling drooling six-legged Starship Troopers reject that can survive being exploded to bits by drawing all the bits back together so it can reform itself in all its toothy glory? Dunno. Seems inefficient. But this creature, known as a Xenophage, has a maw that functions like a wood chipper – something/one goes into its mouth and bzzzzrrrrttttttttzz, blood and blecch spews from the back of its head – so even if it fails at this very important job, at least it’ll look super cool.
Meanwhile, remember what happened at the end of Let There Be Carnage? God, please don’t make me remember. I don’t wanna remember! You’ll probably have to be like me and consult the internet to jog the ol’ memory, that Eddie Brock (Hardy) and Venom (Hardy’s digital-distorto voice) exiled themselves to Mexico and fell through a multiverse portal or something so they’d end up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Well, hahaha, that was all bullshit, because he ends up right back in the inferior cinematic universe where he began – if I’m comprehending all this correctly, which is easier said than done. Eddie’s wanted for murdering Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham), aka Carnage, an alien symbiote a la Venom. And so Eddie and Venom, who’s still glued to his mind, and also his body – sort of, as Venom’s invisible until he wants to manifest himself at least – sets out for New York City to clear his name.
Also meanwhile, a military honcho (Chiwetel Ejiofor) working at Area 51 catches whiff of the Xenophage and soon realizes it has something to do with Mulligan’s symbiote, which is in custody at Area 55, an underground symbiote-study HQ that must’ve cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions, and is run by Dr. Teddy Paine (Juno Temple). It is hereby established that Area 51 has an outdoor facility consisting of two big tanks and a spigot so acid showers may be used to disintegrate shit. Don’t bother to bookmark that one for the third act, because I’m sure nothing will come of it! The Xenophage and the military types eventually convene right on Eddie/Venom’s ass, because THE CODEX is embedded in Venom’s spine. Scuffles ensue, and one of them, the big one, at the end, the extra-noisy one, threatens Eddie and Venom’s beeyootiful friendship. At this point, Venom really should be singing don’t cry for me, Argentina, but he doesn’t. It kinda wouldn’t totally make sense, but then again, nothing in this movie does.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Did you ever go to a theater in the 1980s that filled the screen with abstract colored blobs prior to the trailers? That’s pretty much the visual aesthetic that precedes the Venom movies.
Performance Worth Watching: “Hey, wanna see a movie starring Tom Hardy, Juno Temple and Chiwetel Ejiofor?” “Hell yes!” “OK – it’s called Venom: The Last Dance.” “Eat my shorts!”
Memorable Dialogue: Venom explains away the MCU crossover tease: “I’m so done with this multiverse shit!”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Diminishing returns, but returns nonetheless: Venom loaded $850 million into Sony’s coffers, Let There Be Carnage did a mere half-billion, and The Last Dance will lodge a tad beneath that, although we all know that a half-bil doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to. That’s all in direct correlation to the creativity of this trilogy-within-a-cinematic-universe, which bottomed out at about the 45-minute mark of the first movie and stayed there all the way to the post-credits scene of this final one. All three movies are dedicated to juvenilia, visual sloppiness and ramshackle narratives that play like they were written while high on off-brand dishwasher rinse-aid and edited over Zoom by a spoonbender.
I’m aware I’m making these movies sound more fun than they actually are. Which is to say, they suck rocks through a straw. And The Last Dance might be the worst of them, with Hardy seeming toned down and uninspired, less wild and manic than before. And the comedy – such as it is; I at least laughed a few times at dopey gags during the first two – is completely AWOL, lost in the desert for reasons unknown, dying of thirst in a stretching barren plain, unsure of which direction leads to life and water and shelter. And it’s all so pointlessly silly, and loud, so so very loud, and very much aware of how silly and loud it is, because that seems to be the desperately stupid goal of these films. One thing stands out about The Last Dance, namely its desperate stab at emotional resonance, where Venom, who’s already so gooey, goes extra-squishy when things must come to an end. We’re all so indelibly moved by this tomfool pissing-about, I’m sure.
Our Call: SKIP IT HARD LIKE THE LAST CLASS BEFORE BREAK. Up next? Kraven the Hunter puts a bow on the SSMU. For now or forever, doesn’t matter, because these movies make you feel like nothing ever matters, ever.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
