Venom: The Last Dance is a bit of a hot mess.
Granted, I went into this screening with low expectations considering the previous two iterations underwhelmed me, but this one feels utterly disjointed and random. The plot wanders from one sight gag to another, mostly not funny, until it finally gets down to business. Tom Hardy bears some responsibility for this as he co-wrote the script. As he repeats his lead character Eddie Brock/Venom, he mainly looks as if he’d rather be somewhere else. New characters include Juno Temple as Dr. Payne, an annoying scientist, Chiwetel Ejiofor as General Strickland, and Rhys Ifans as Martin, a hippy who’s driving across the country with his family to see the UFOs at the now declassified Area 51. Yes, he’s a true believer.
As the film opens, Eddie and his symbiote Venom are on the run while struggling with their usual love/hate relationship. Well, Eddie struggles while Venom gleefully enjoys it. They’re in a remote town in Mexico befuddling the local bartender (Cristo Fernandez), when they appear on the radar of the Feds and Venom’s home planet’s dark leader Knull (Andy Serkis). They’re going to have to run somewhere else.
The Feds want to take them to a secret lab under Area 51, and Knull wants to kill Venom and all the other symbiotes hiding on Earth even though he created them. They betrayed and imprisoned him and he needs the codex hidden in one of them to escape and exact his revenge. I think you can probably guess who has the codex which hardly matters since the hideous, un-killable creatures Knull sends are supposed to kill everyone.
They arrive in a desolate area near the Grand Canyon where they encounter Martin and his family who agree to drop Eddie in Las Vegas, even though that’s not where Eddie is going. Random, much? Venom remains hidden to the family who although they’re pretty weird wouldn’t understand the whole symbiote thing.
So in Las Vegas, the hapless, disheveled Eddie, steals a tuxedo so he can get into the Paris Casino. For me, Tom Hardy, cleaned up in the tuxedo was the high point of the film. I heard a few people whisper “James Bond” — not a bad idea! In the casino, they encounter Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) whose vignette with the two is one of the best things about the film. Of course, things that happen in Vegas don’t stay in Vegas.
The word vignette really describes the wandering narrative. There’s the Mexico vignette, the Grand Canyon vignette, the Vegas vignette, and then the final vignette at Area 51. That one I’ll leave for you to discover because that’s when the plot lines sort of come together.
I was left with a couple of questions and an observation. First, how could Tom Hardy write such a clumsy attempt at humor and characters? Second, what is Chiwetel Ejiofor doing in this film trying, unsuccessfully, to be all serious? And thirdly, Juno Temple may have the most annoying voice in the Universe.
The film’s title uses the word “last”, but is it really? If you stay through the credits, there are two preview (I guess) scenes to see. One could be expected, but the other is inexplicable. So, I guess it depends on how big a fan you are of Venom and the Marvel multiverse as to how much you’ll enjoy Venom: The Last Dance. The main feedback I heard at the end was “Now, what?” – JoAnne Hyde
