Maybe it’s that Sony’s Spider-Man-adjacent “Venom” movie franchise had nowhere to go but up after 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.”
Maybe I simply can’t help but be drawn into any film featuring “12 Years a Slave” star Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Or maybe I’ve been bitten by a snake and its poison is starting to do its thing.
Regardless of the reason, I didn’t mind “Venom: The Last Dance,” in theaters this week.
Is the formula of these flicks still too campy for my liking? Hard yes. Did I check my watch a few times even though the latest romp clocks in at under two hours? I did.
However, with series writer Kelly Marcel making her directorial debut with this entry, the symbiotic schtick between Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and the powerful — and over-the-top — alien entity, Venom, that has merged with him works for me in “The Last Dance” in the way it didn’t in “Carnage” or 2018’s “Venom.” (In the movie’s production notes, Marcel uses the term “rom-com” to describe the franchise, and when you look at the Eddie-Venom dynamic through that lens, it kind of tracks.)
If I’m following the multiversal madness, “The Last Dance” picks up with Eddie and Venom at a Mexican bar in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, into which they’d been pulled — and subsequently vacated — in the 2021 release from Disney-owned Marvel Studios’”Spider-Man: No Way Home. I … think what we get here is a so-called “retcon,” a tweaking of those scenes to alter something that happened in “Home” so it can be used differently in storytelling. (Sorry if I’m wrong, but, honestly, I don’t care.)
Soon back in the same bar but in his own universe — with Cristo Fernández (“Ted Lasso”) still bartending — Eddie is on the run from the law after the events of “Carnage.” To make matters worse, Venom is being hunted by a mysterious villain in space, the big bad sending monstrous minions off to find something that exists when Eddie and Venom fully merge into the big black antihero beloved by a legion of comic book readers.
To stay hidden, they can’t fully merge, which complicates matters.
Meanwhile, Ejiofor’s General Strickland leads the military side of operations at the soon-to-be-decommissioned Area 51 in Nevada, where Dr. Teddy Payne (fellow “Ted Lasso” alum Juno Temple) wants to learn everything she can from the symbiotes. They do not see eye to eye on the type of life that should be prioritized at the legendary military facility.
Eddie and Venom are headed to New York City, where the latter is eager to see the Statue of Liberty, but they get rerouted to Las Vegas — after running afoul of one of those alien hunters — when they hitch a ride with a family of four. Led by alien-curious patriarch Martin (Rhys Ifans, “House of the Dragon”), the clan is on its way to see Area 51 before its closure.
That is, of course, where the bulk of the action takes place, action of the run-of-the-mill variety.
There is some fun along the way, such as the moment from the promotional footage in which Venom overtakes a horse to super-charge it, but there’s nothing special to be found in “The Last Dance.” Also written by Marcel, from a story she cooked up with Hardy, the tale lacks anything approaching genuine creativity.
Hardy (“The Revenant,” “Dunkirk”) seems to enjoy dancing with Venom in this film and the others — and the voice he employs for the Venom character is endlessly fantastic — but this continues to seem like such a strange use of his immense talent. His performance was the strongest aspect of “The Bikeriders,” a film released earlier this year, and with “The Last Dance” positioned as the final chapter in a trilogy, it would be great to see Hardy take on more interesting projects over the next few years.
Is that to say we certainly have seen the last of Hardy as Eddie and Venom? No, of course not. If the door isn’t left wide open, it’s kept from closing with the help of some alien goo. (Rumors have persisted that Hardy’s Venom will be featured in the fourth “Spider-Man” film starring Tom Holland, set to shoot in 2025, but Hardy recently suggested that won’t be the case. We’ll see.)
But you know the superhero-movie deal — stay into the credits if you want a tease or two of what Sony may have planned for a future release in its Spider-Man Universe. Given that the other offerings in that realm are 2022’s underwhelming “Morbius” and this year’s widely panned “Madame Web,” you’d be forgiven for heading straight for the exit.
‘VENOM: THE LAST DANCE’
2 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images and strong language)
Running time: 1:49
How to watch: In theaters
