For three films now, has smushed Jekyll and Hyde into one strange and slimy double act. In a Marvel universe filled with alter egos that cloak stealthy superpowers, his investigative reporter Eddie Brock doesn鈥檛 transform. He shares his body with an ink-black alien symbiote (voiced with a baritone growl by Hardy), who sometimes swallows him whole, sometimes shoots a tentacle or two out, and always chipperly punctuates Eddie鈥檚 inner monologue.
These have been consistently messy, almost willfully bad movies, but Hardy鈥檚 performance has been a strangely compelling . It鈥檚 one thing to throw a cape on and jump the sky. It鈥檚 another to run manically through the desert with an alien voice inside barking, as Eddie's inner-alien does in the new 鈥淓ngage your core,鈥� 鈥淣ice horsey鈥� and 鈥淭equila!鈥�
The biggest dichotomy of these movies, though, isn鈥檛 the Eddie-symbiote split. It鈥檚 the contrast between Hardy鈥檚 funny, sometimes oddly touching performance and all of the CGI mess around him. There were moments of fun in the first two movies, but if 鈥淭he Last Dance,鈥� which opens in theaters Thursday, is for this spun-off, half-formed franchise, it confirms that the 鈥淰enom鈥� films never quite figured themselves out.
In 鈥淭he Last Dance,鈥� Kelly Marcel, co-writer of the first two 鈥淰enom鈥� films, takes over directing, following Andy Serkis (2021鈥檚 鈥淰enom: Let There Be Carnage鈥�) and Ruben Fleischer (2018鈥檚 鈥淰enom鈥�). We rejoin Venom (the fusion of Eddie and his alien-entity soulmate) in Mexico where they鈥檙e on the run from the law. But a new threat is also emerging.
The movie opens with Knull (Serkis), the symbiote creator who, from some icky distant and dark corner of space, dispatches aliens to retrieve a 鈥渃odex鈥� found within Venom鈥檚 spine that, if obtained, will lead to the annihilation of both humans and symbiotes.
To me, bringing a typical comic book-style doomsday plot is about the last thing a 鈥淰enom鈥� movie needs. The best sequences in the first two movies are no more complicated than Venom craving lobster or ordering pizza. Smaller stakes better suit its warped comedy. The touchstone for these movies shouldn鈥檛 be the Marvel playbook but old episodes of 鈥淭he Odd Couple.鈥�
Instead, we鈥檙e thrown into a pretty immediately boring Area 51 setting where an elaborate lab headed by Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) studies the symbiotes it has trapped with the help of a military division led by Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor, lending more gravitas to the movie than it deserves). Once the alien insect things arrive seeking the codex, there鈥檚 plenty of running and fighting, with a UFO-enthusiast family in a VW bus (Rhys Ifans plays the dad) thrown into the mix. The ensuing battle ultimately, as the title promises, threatens to divide Venom for good.
But the promise of the 鈥淰enom鈥� series, really, is that the mainline Marvel stuff would intrude less here. This is a B-movie realm of the multiverse with little appetite for solemnity, nobility or two-and-half-hour running times. They can feel a little like tossed-off knockoffs, which is both their appeal and their frustration.
I kept rooting for the surprisingly lifeless 鈥淭he Last Dance鈥� to pull way back on its save-the-world plot (and its CGI) and lean more into its most potent effect: Hardy鈥檚 split-personality double act. If this is to be a last hurrah 鈥� which, granted is a dubious idea for anything even adjacently connected to 鈥淪pider-Man鈥� 鈥� it鈥檚 a shame that we never saw more of Venom in daily life. Eddie is a journalist after all. One can only imagine how he and the symbiote might have debated more pressing concerns than the fate of the universe, like Oxford commas.
鈥淰enom: The Last Dance,鈥� a Columbia Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images and strong language. Running time: 110 minutes. Two stars out of four.
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
