Eddie and Venom’s Super-Powered Bromantic Love Affair Reaches The Last Dance
I give Tom Hardy credit for this: the Venom trilogy is almost certainly what he wanted it to be. Absurd. Strange. Campy. Never taking itself too seriously. Flamboyantly Queer. Wears its heart on its sleeve. Perverse. Silly. Melodramatic. Those are some of the core elements that can be found in each of the three films that make up the series. While each one when needed does bow to convention (one imagines both Sony and Marvel insisted on at least a few concessions), overall, these pictures are weird, and I mean that as a compliment.
Not that I ever expected I’d be a fan of this franchise back when the first entry hit theaters in 2018 and became a surprise box-office smash. While Hardy was outstandingly loony as ace San Francisco journalist Eddie Brock, a man suddenly infected by an alien symbiote calling itself “Venom” who needed his body to survive and turned him into a super-powered, head-chomping antihero, the film itself was so gosh darn messy watching it was a giant chore. But there was something there, an anything-goes vitality that was strangely arresting enough to make the prospect of a sequel not altogether unappealing.
Because of that, I won’t say I was shocked I ended up enjoying 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Directed by Andy Serkis, it was a freewheeling blast of cartoonish madness that let Hardy go bonkers. It embraced the homoerotic relationship between Eddie and Venom, the picture spending more time on the interplay between the two of them than it ever did on its nonsensical plot involving the duo facing off against fan-favorite villain serial killer Cletus Kasady, aka Carnage, portrayed by an enthusiastically outrageous Woody Harrelson.
Now comes the concluding chapter of the trilogy, Venom: The Last Dance, and it’s even more gloriously daft than its predecessors were. After a brief prologue where it brings Eddie back to his home reality after a brief stint in the multiverse (courtesy of Spider-Man: No Way Home) and perfunctorily introduces all-powerful villain Knull (Serkis, stepping out of the director’s chair for this installment), things preposterously cut loose from there. Eddie and Venom are on the run for the havoc they helped cause while battling Carnage and end up in an intergalactic battle with Knull’s carnivorous minions. Everything climaxes at a decommissioned Area 51 where a massive battle for the fate of the known Universe ensues.
Hardy’s writing and producing partner Kelly Marcel (Saving Mr. Banks) slips behind the camera for her directorial debut, and she ends up showing a great deal of promise. The action sequences are some of the best of the series. The utilization of ample motion capture and CG visual effects (admittedly of varying quality) are efficiently executed. That pace of the film never drags yet still allows for idiosyncratic character beats that give the proceedings some small semblance of humanity.
Best of all, Hardy and Marcel let the entanglement between Eddie and Venom be their end-all, be-all that’s free from distraction or restraint. Like some twisted variation on Brief Encounter or Once, The Last Dance is an unabashed unrequited love letter to the two characters and, like Murtaugh and Riggs waxing poetic over a bomb planted underneath a suburban toilet, they openly express their mutual affection with winsome tenderness.
There’s this delightfully understated scene where the pair spy a newlywed couple on the streets of Las Vegas and Venom asks Eddie if he ever thinks about marriage. It’s clear by the way they subtly emote their discussion is about one another. Other moments, mostly involving their brief interactions with an alien-obsessed family led by Rhys Ifans and Alanna Ubach makes this mutually longing on their parts even more concrete.
Knull reportedly is going to be an MCU villain going forward (thus why Serkis is portraying him), but that doesn’t mean he does anything interesting here. Subplots involving Area 51 soldiers and scientists portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, and Clark Backo are perfectly passable but not much more than that, and it’s clear Hardy and Marcel would rather spend more time focusing on Eddie and Venom than they would on any of them. The plethora of never-before-seen symbiotes fighting with Venom to save the Earth from destruction during the climax borders on inane overkill. However, Peggy Lu returns for one final appearance as Mrs. Chen, and while her appearance is undeniably ludicrous, it is equally wonderful, too.
Look, Venom: The Last Dance is not some great comic book superhero masterpiece, and neither were the first two pieces of this trilogy. But Hardy and Marcel had a game plan and they steadfastly followed it all the way to the end. I respect that. More importantly, for those attuned to their whack-a-doodle sensibilities, this series somehow found its way to becoming a heck of a lot of fun. I admire that even more.
Film Rating: 2½ (out of 4)
