Thursday, October 24, 2024

Venom: The Last Dance

He is an alien body-snatcher who decided to become a good guy—sort of. Sure, he still bites off heads, but only those of bad people. Granted, in most films, Venom would be the monster, as indeed he was during most of his first film. Nevertheless, Eddie Brock learned to share his life and his headspace with his parasitic companion. Currently, they are fugitives from justice, but no arrangement is ever perfect. Unfortunately, something from the symbiote’s world starts hunting Venom and Brock, with no regard for human collateral damage, in director-screenwriter Kelly Marcel’s Venom: The Last Dance, which opens tomorrow only in theaters.

Currently, Brock and Venom are laying low (but not low enough) in Mexico, where Venom’s margarita mixing techniques draw unwanted notice. Brock wants to return to America, where he can work to clear his name, so he figures New York City will be the one place where they will not stand out. Getting there will be the trick.

They also need to put some distance between themselves and the large assassin kaiju that tracked Venom from his original space-time-dimension-continuum. As Venom explains to the alarmed Brock, they carry an alien artifact that would free the creature’s master, a malevolent titan intent on destroying all organic life, in all the various universes. That would be a bad thing. Fortunately, the codex-thingy is only visible to the hunter-creature when Venom takes his full black spiderman-looking form—but it is hard to keep the symbiote bottled up.

Eventually, Brock and Venom encounter more symbiotes in a secret government facility cleverly located below Area 51. Unfortunately, that location prompts discussion of the worst aspect of
Last Dance: its pronounced and persistent hostility to the American military. There is not one single military character presented in a positive light. That definitely includes the judgmental, shoot-first-ask-questions-later Gen. Rex Strickland, despite his third act heroics. Most are just faceless grist for the mill, so viewers are expected to feel nothing when Venom kills several of them.

Let’s be honest, there is no way any film would portray multiple school teachers or public defenders as soulless villains. Why does Marvel consider it acceptable to uniformly demonize American military personnel, especially when they sacrifice so much more than teachers to serve our nation? In the case of Marcel’s screenplay, this bias is distractingly noticeable.

It is a shame because the symbiotic rapport between Brock and Venom still works. You can say Tom Hardy has good chemistry with himself. His Venom-psycho voice still gets big laughs. It is also cool to see some of the best Venom CGI effects are reserved for comedic bits, like the symbiote’s titular last dance with fan favorite character Mrs. Chen, again played by the returning Peggy Lu, who can hold her own opposite the big serpentine guy.

Frankly, Chiwetel Ejifor is suitably intense as Gen. Strickland. However, Juno Temple looks weird as symbiote researcher Dr. Teddy Payne and her sometimes inexplicable reactions and motivations are even stranger. Rhys Ifans is even cringier as Martin Moon, the hippy UFO chaser who gives Brock a ride to Vegas. However, Hala Finley almost makes those scenes palatable, undercutting his new age dippiness, as his sarcastic daughter, Echo Moon.

In
Last Dance, you can see the elements that made the first two films successful, as well as the poor decisions that run the third film off the rails. It is a shame because flawed storylines and divisive attitudes are entirely preventable. As a result, the trilogy closes on a disappointing note when Venom: The Last Dance opens tomorrow (10/25) in theaters, including the LOOK Dine-in W57th.