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As I exited a press screening for “Venom: The Last Dance,” I happened to overhear a sampling of initial reviews, courtesy of a discussion between some local film critics.
“Straight nonsense,” said one. “Not even good nonsense,” came the clarification. “‘Morbius’ was something, ‘Madame Web’ was something, this was nothing,” proclaimed the death knell.
Okay, admittedly, that was all from one guy. But aside from giving two of Sony’s most notorious flops more credit than they probably deserve, his point of view seems to me like a fairly reasonable assessment from a neutral party.
(I am not a neutral party.)
On the contrary, I have a fondness for the “Venom” trilogy that borders on delusion. I am a passionate defender of its essential campiness, its utter disregard for tonal consistency and its admirable commitment to making noted heartthrob Tom Hardy look like the saddest, dampest man alive. All this to say that if you’re looking for an appropriately scathing review, you can track down that other guy — otherwise, pop on your rose-colored glasses and let’s roll.
When we catch up with Eddie Brock (Hardy) and his goopy alien buddy Venom in “The Last Dance,” they’ve fled San Francisco, Calif., and are camping out in Mexico after being wrongfully blamed for the death of police officer Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham). When Venom confesses a desire to see the Statue of Liberty, the duo decides to travel to New York City and attempt to clear Eddie’s name, all while trying to dodge the federal authorities sent to track down and subdue them. Coincidentally, an army of seemingly indestructible alien predators is also hot on their heels, seeking something called a Codex, which was formed when Venom resurrected Eddie at the end of the first movie. However, there’s a catch: The aliens can only track the Codex when Venom and Eddie are combined in their full form.
Why does the story center on a threat that the characters could most easily avoid by doing nothing? Beats me. The plots of the “Venom” movies have always been paper-thin, chock-full of internal inconsistencies and nonsensical decision-making. But while some may consider that a dealbreaker, there’s a reason why audiences have consistently contradicted critics with regard to the “Venom” trilogy, and it has everything to do with the characters.
When we meet Eddie in the first movie, he’s a cocky but kind-hearted reporter who, when told to pick his battles, presumably hits “select all.” This trait quickly costs him his job, his relationship with his lawyer fiancée Anne (Michelle Williams) and ultimately leads to his bond with Venom, an alien symbiote that brings him both indigestion and superhuman abilities — not to mention a disconcerting craving for brains. The relationship between Eddie and Venom is the trilogy’s core, blending elements of a buddy-cop dynamic, an odd-couple pairing and a demonic possession. Picture, if you will, an action-horror rom-com between a man and his hypercompetent tapeworm.
But as enjoyable as this dynamic disaster duo is to watch, much of the charm of the first and second movies comes from the side characters, particularly Anne and her new boyfriend Dan (Reid Scott). Eddie is very much not over Anne by the time Dan comes into the picture, but rather than take the easy route of making Dan a jerk so that the audience will root for reconciliation between Anne and Eddie, the movie instead makes a point of showing that Dan is a genuinely sweet guy. He goes out of his way to care for an increasingly erratic Eddie, seemingly harbors no jealousy about Eddie’s past relationship with Anne and, despite being scared out of his mind, aids in the fight against the second movie’s primary villain, murderous symbiote Carnage (Woody Harrelson), when called upon. Anne is also a solid character, clearly still caring deeply about Eddie even as they snipe at each other.
Unfortunately, “The Last Dance” sees Anne and Dan replaced by a slate of new side characters that prove difficult to get invested in, including a squandered Chiwetel Ejiofor as Commander Rex Strickland and an unusually wooden Juno Temple as Dr. Teddy Payne. Even though Eddie does reunite with the delightful Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu), the owner of a convenience store Eddie frequents in San Francisco, for a surreal dance number, the inclusion of her character mainly served to remind me how much I enjoyed these movies when they were set on a more modest scale, reined in by a smaller cast and the city limits of San Francisco.
The villain, too, suffers from a scaling issue when compared to the first two films. Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), the first film’s antagonist, was your standard evil billionaire, and even Carnage, for all his wanton bloodlust, primarily seemed interested in taking revenge on Eddie and Venom while getting hitched to his unstable host’s equally unstable girlfriend. Going from those two to a lazily defined, potentially universe-ending threat has the counterintuitive result of reducing the movie’s stakes significantly. If the movie shows me Eddie and Venom bumbling around San Francisco with their ragtag crew, I’m on the edge of my seat — if it instead cuts between them and a bunch of characters I don’t care about while trying to convince me the world’s going to end, I’m spending half my time stifling a yawn.
But nevertheless, when “The Last Dance” goes back to basics, it works. Eddie and Venom are still a delight to watch, and if the movie had stuck to the plotline it seemed to be building toward of the duo taking a road trip to New York City to wreak havoc and clear Eddie’s name, I think it would have been a much stronger story. Instead, the pair’s journey stalls in Las Vegas, Nev., a city that ends up being a decent metaphor for the movie as a whole — there’s no shortage of entertainment, color or crowd-pleasing spectacle, but beneath the glitz is a disappointingly hollow core.