It’s always weird as hell when a comedy series tries to end on a weepy, nostalgic note, and it’s even stranger when it’s a series primarily focused around a gay romance between a nebbish journalist and his superpowered black-goo alien partner. I don’t think one could ever really describe the Venom movies as “moving,” though they do have plenty of superlatives that one could throw at them: “unexpected delights,” “ferociously funny,” “proof that Tom Hardy is among the best working actors in Hollywood today.” It’s also an unexpectedly successful franchise, done on the (relative) cheap by Sony, which spun gold out of a Spider-Man character without ever acknowledging the wall-crawler’s influence. The first Venom was dunked on mercilessly prior to its release, but Hardy’s sheer commitment to the bit, assisted by genuinely solid writing and a strong supporting cast, turned it into an endearing curio, which was full of the very things that made it a laughing stock (Hardy’s weird accent, the hints of queer subtext, the Eminem tie-in song) yet possessed with enough self-awareness as a counter to Ryan Reynolds-style randomness. The sequel, Let There Be Carnage, was even better, matching Hardy’s insanity with Woody Harrelson and bringing the gay subtext to the forefront, with Andy Serkis seemingly finding a million and one ways to heighten the comedic tension. I genuinely think it’s one of the best superhero movies of the decade so far – a 100-minute joyride through Hardy’s psyche as a producer,
When Sony first announced the title of the third installment in the franchise – Venom: The Last Dance – folks immediately seized on comparisons with the doc series that it shared a name with. They mostly just reposted that variant cover from one of the Venom comic books that showed the character posterizing Spider-Man on the court, but a few gleaned the true purpose of the movie: it was a legacy-building finale, as much as that final season with the Bulls was for His Airness. This, it turns out, is the entire problem with Kelly Marcel’s debut feature, as the Venom movies worked best when they weren’t trying to pull similar bullshit to the comic book movies that saw themselves as stately, especially since they were unencumbered by the crushing confines of shared-universe expectations. Marcel’s hereditary genre royalty (her father directed Hawk the Slayer, after all), and also the longtime writer for the series, so it makes sense that she would finally take the chair to steer the series to its conclusion. Unfortunately, she’s taking the series back to its roots – pseudo-serious science-fiction complete with underground military bases and government conspiracies to replace the corporate malfeasance in the first – and incorporating one of the most frustrating storylines in modern comic lore as a bridge between it and potential spin-offs or MCU connections.
That storyline concerns Knull, a hangover from the mid-2010s when every publisher wanted a multiversal villain who dressed like Spirit Halloween Slipknot: DC had the Batman Who Laughs (who was rightfully banished to Fortnite – literally, the video game – and forgotten about once everyone stopped finding the joke funny), Marvel had Knull. Knull is the so-called great enemy of the Symbiotes, a force older than time itself, who looks like a Dark Elf from a particularly retrograde World of Warcraft expansion. He’s impossibly powerful, incredibly complex, and probably the worst thing to happen to Venom since they brought Eddie Brock back to replace Flash Thompson. When thinking about symbiotes, it’s important to remember how blissfully uncomplicated their origins were: initially, it was just one cool suit that Spider-Man found on Battleworld during Secret Wars, which gained an exciting twist once he found out the suit was alive and doing bad shit to his psyche. Now, symbiotes are mystical motherfuckers, there’s an endless supply of them to mine once Funko realizes they need a comic tie-in to sell “Venomized” pops to collectors and speculators, and they are everywhere, responsible for line-wide crossovers and such. If George Lucas had been responsible for this, we’d think of Knull and his legacy like we do Midichlorians – an overcomplication of a straightforward and fun concept, regardless of how “metal” it is or whatever.
Anyhow, Knull – the dark god of the symbiotes – wants to be let free of the dark multiversal prison he’s trapped in, and he discovers his way out once Eddie Brock (Hardy) is shunted back from the MCU following the post-credits sequences of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Let There Be Carnage. That happens to be something called a “codex,” which is never satisfyingly explained, but it came about when Venom merged his life force with Eddie at the end of the first film. So, Knull sends out his lizard-like monsters – whose vision is built specifically to track Eddie and Venom when they’re suited up – as Eddie’s trying to get over a hangover in Mexico. The pair have been blamed for the death of a cop and are fugitives from justice, and they decide to head to New York to resolve the case. Problem is, they have no good way of getting there (Eddie doesn’t even have shoes, a swell recurring gag that’s the franchise’s bread-and-butter), and their attempt to catch a ride on a jetliner (in which Venom literally sticks to the outside of the plane) is soon thwarted by these creature-things. Eventually, they crash-land in the American Southwest, and start to walk towards civilization, meeting a family of hippies whose patriarch (Rhys Ifans) is psyched up to see Area 51.
At the same time, a scientist (Juno Temple) and a general (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are working on the symbiote problem at Area 55, the out-of-sight, out-of-mind new hotbed of government conspiracy that’s replacing the soon-to-be decommissioned Area 51. They get word that Brock is making his way across the country, and the general sends his men after him while the scientist interrogates a captive symbiote and learns more about Knull. His arrival means the end of all things or whatever, so capturing Brock and severing their bond through, you know, murder becomes the general’s mission. That’s the only way the “codex” can be broken: One of the two has to die so that the Venomverse may continue to live. If you think I’m being flippant and/or pithy, guilty as charged, any moment spent with Temple or Ejiofor is one taken away from the delightful ridiculousness that Hardy gets up to in his side of the story, full of an aggressive seriousness that is frighteningly dull in a franchise that had seemed to move away from that kind of garbage. Alas, there are too many competing energies here to let the movie breathe: Hardy’s very clearly done with the character, Sony needs a hook for Spider-Man 4 so that they can bring back the Spider-Men, and comic book nerds need something to talk about in the absence of any outright connection to the MCU. So, The Last Dance takes on the tone of Sarah MacLachlan’s “I Will Remember You,” as sung by a choir at a middle school graduation.
It’s a strange choice: Marcel, in trying to illustrate exactly what we’re losing now that Venom is over in done with, strips the final installment of those very attributes like it’s a wake held two weeks before someone dies. This tonal shift gives the film a constipated and po-faced attitude, with bits of bright levity in between the Knull-induced dull. Hardy remains as on top of his game as he always is – a genuinely funny scene at the start features him trying to make a margarita while Venom is trying to jazz along to Tequila, tearing apart the tiki bar in the process to the horror of the bartender – and whatever minor pathos the movie achieves comes solely from him, such as a moment in which Venom tries to egg him to participate in a “Space Oddity” singalong with the hippie family as they make their way towards Vegas. He realizes the danger they’re in and the life they could have had together, potentially, and the mood appropriately shifts into something befitting the emotion behind that awareness. Then comes Ejiofor or Temple to bring us back to square one and remind us that there’s a Spider-Man movie on the horizon, god damn it – stop living in the past! It makes sense why Hardy would be so fed up with the franchise at this point, too: His bizarre and hyper-creative interpretation of the character is at odds with the planning Sony wants for their stillborn cinematic universe and its tangential association with Disney, and there’s no room in which his and Marcel’s bizarre little creation can wiggle, regardless of how much they try.
I guess the good thing about The Last Dance is that it reminds us that Let There Be Carnage exists and is available to watch at any time now that it’s on home video because that’s a better usage of one’s time than this bullshit preamble is. You don’t need to “remember” the good times: They’re streaming.