Nerdly » ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ Review

24th Oct2024

‘Venom: The Last Dance’ Review

by Matthew Turner

Stars: Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rhys Ifans, Peggy Lu, Stephen Graham, Andy Serkis | Written and Directed by Kelly Marcel

Tom Hardy returns as hapless Eddie Brock and his titular shape-shifting symbiote for the third film in the Venom franchise, which is also the fifth film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (which is so far mostly notable for being a universe without Spider-Man in it). This time round, it’s directed by British screenwriter Kelly Marcel, who co-wrote the first Venom movie and also wrote the poorly received sequel, 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

Venom: The Last Dance begins with an amusing joke, effectively sticking two fingers up at the multiverse and walking back the tease from the post-credits sting on the last Spider-Man movie, which suggested Venom had entered the MCU (i.e. the same universe as Tom Holland’s Peter Parker). Back in his own universe, Eddie / Venom find themselves on the run, following the events of the previous movie, and they somehow wind up at a soon-to-be-decommissioned Area 51, in the Nevada desert, where military honcho Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and scientist Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) have captured and are studying a resuscitated Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham) and his symbiote, Toxin.

As if being pursued by the military wasn’t enough, Eddie and Venom also find themselves targeted by terrifying and seemingly unkillable space creatures from Venom’s home planet, who have been sent by the symbiote creator Knull (Andy Serkis). Worse still, the creatures are hunting something inside Eddie / Venom called the codex, which could be the key to a full-scale invasion of Earth. And the only way to diffuse the codex is for either Eddie or Venom to die.

Hardy’s delightful dual comic performance as Eddie / Venom is the main reason for the success of the franchise and he is once again on terrific form here, constantly bickering with himself, but also pulling off a surprisingly moving bond between the two characters. Consequently, he’s frequently very funny, and the small details that are added to Venom’s personality – the fact that he loves musicals and David Bowie, for example – are extremely welcome touches.

The supporting cast are good value too, particularly Temple, who brings a palpable drive to Dr. Payne, and Ejiofor, who is effectively authoritative as Strickland. Similarly, Rhys Ifans is a lot of fun as Martin, a campervan-driving Area 51-obsessed hippie, whose family trip to Roswell to maybe see some aliens before the site gets decommissioned takes something of an unexpected turn.

Marcel’s direction is pleasingly streamlined throughout. The previous Venom movie suffered from incoherent, poorly staged and CGI-cluttered action sequences, but the third instalment course corrects to a considerable degree. It’s true that there is still an awful lot of CGI symbiote goo flowing about on screen, but a lot more attention has gone into the detail of the fight scenes and you can actually tell who is doing what to who, so to speak.

On top of that, Marcel has a good command of tension, significantly increasing the stakes as the movie progresses, particularly when the audience realises how hard the space creatures are going to be to kill. Marcel also has a good sense of fun, pulling off what anybody else’s hands would have been a potentially jarring tonal shift, in a fun dance sequence involving supporting character Mrs Chen (Peggy Lu) that is pure comic book nonsense. (“When did you two REHEARSE this?”, wonders Eddie).

It is fair to say that Venom: The Last Dance isn’t entirely without flaws. For one thing, Knull is a bit dull as a supposedly Thanos-esque scary future villain, and Serkis gets very little to do as a result. On a similar note, Stephen Graham is so poorly under-used that you wonder why they brought him back in the first place.

In short, this doesn’t quite hit the heights of the first Venom movie, but it’s a vast improvement on the second and delivers a decent amount of black, gooey fun. Any attempt to expand the Venom universe from this point though (especially without Hardy) is probably ill-advised.