‘Venom: The Last Dance’: Review

Dir: Kelly Marcel. US. 2024. 109mins 

Tom Hardy’s beleaguered journalist and his symbiote finest buddy go on the run in Venom: The Final Dance, which leans onerous on the franchise’s two strengths: its goofy sense of humour and its large coronary heart. Though usually characterised as a superhero sequence with horror components, the trilogy has principally performed out as an oddball buddy comedy – and this purported closing chapter follows that method to intermittently entertaining impact.

This trilogy might be ending on the proper time

The Final Dance pits our heroes towards their most formidable foe but — an historical alien evil that wishes to destroy all the things in its path — however what works finest is the dopey appeal of Hardy reverse his CGI sidekick. Their grouchy rapport is nearly sufficient to make up for a slapdash script and a few predictable style components.

Sony unveils The Final Dance within the UK and US on October 25, trying to finish the trilogy on a industrial excessive be aware. However the 2018 authentic’s $856 million gross appears out of attain, and preliminary monitoring means that the brand new movie could even have bother matching the $507 million collected by 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Nonetheless, there isn’t a comic-book competitors in sight, which ought to assist theatrical prospects. 

Eddie (Hardy) is in hiding after the occasions of Let There Be Carnage with the alien symbiote Venom (voiced by Hardy) nonetheless hooked up to him. However as soon as they be taught that authorities wish to arrest Eddie for a homicide he didn’t commit, the duo decides to get on the highway to flee detection. Unbeknownst to the pair, although, a terrifying alien — a sibling of kinds to Venom and his fellow symbiotes — has arrived to search out Eddie and Venom, who maintain the important thing to unlocking an unfathomable energy.

Author Kelly Marcel, who wrote or co-wrote the earlier Venom image, makes her characteristic directorial debut right here. Not surprisingly, then, The Final Dance appears like a thematic continuation, with the movie constructing towards a finale that’s far much less open-ended than most blockbusters. There may be additionally a noticeable melancholy that begins to weave via The Final Dance, regardless of the standard quantities of slapstick silliness and Eddie and Venom’s smart-aleck banter.

By now, audiences know what to anticipate from these two characters, with Eddie eternally annoyed by Venom’s impulsive, violent behaviour, and Hardy once more assaults his twin position with comedian abandon. However even when Eddie and Venom’s odd-couple shtick has grown acquainted, Marcel injects sufficient surprisingly candy moments that it’s clear that she and Hardy, who additionally labored on the story, are invested on this weird, unexpectedly touching bromance.

Sadly, the plot has not loved the identical quantity of care. The Final Dance is solely the most recent superhero flick through which a boringly indestructible enemy seeks to rule the universe, resulting in a usually overblown third-act showdown. Likewise, this sequel’s new supporting characters are unoriginal sorts, together with Chiwetel Ejiofor as Strickland, a gruff US basic decided to get rid of Eddie and Venom. Juno Temple performs Teddy, a conscientious scientist who believes symbiotes ought to be studied, not killed. She is saddled with a tritely tragic backstory that’s awkwardly shoehorned into the action-packed ending, however the hoped-for emotional wallop by no means develops.

What has made this franchise refreshing is its irreverence, and a refusal to be squeaky-clean household leisure in the identical vein because the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (With Disney proudly owning lots of the starriest Marvel properties, Sony has tailored lesser secondary characters it controls, akin to Venom, Morbius and Madame Internet.) Venom’s impolite humour, edgier tone and cartoon-like mayhem have been by no means notably refined, however Hardy’s madcap gusto provides that movie and its sequels a flamable vitality. As well as, Eddie’s rising fondness for this uncouth symbiote opened the door to an interesting sentimentality as soon as these two outcasts shaped a de facto household. 

The Final Dance demonstrates how that combination of sassy and earnest may be enjoyable, however each the tepid motion scenes and mediocre plot twists counsel that this trilogy might be ending on the proper time. The Venom results are nonetheless properly rendered, however the punchlines are somewhat shopworn, though this franchise’s penchant for actually bonkers sequences has not diminished. (A dance sequence set in Las Vegas is so superfluous that it’s nearly endearing.) Eddie and Venom stay feisty firm however, as they hit the highway for this closing chapter, it’s quickly obvious that they don’t actually have wherever else to go.