Review: Venom: The Last Dance a suitably moronic conclusion to Tom Hardy’s awful superhero trilogy

Tom Hardy attends the UK Premiere of Venom: The Last Dance on October 23, 2024 in London, England. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

This old-school eyesore’s only saving grace is that it’s at least differently terrible to the other recent Marvel shockers.

At a time when every new superhero film feels like the worst to have been released since 2021, there is a certain novelty in seeing one that feels like the worst to have been released in 1998. Say hello to Venom: The Last Dance: the third in an unlikely trilogy of solo adventures for Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock, the Spider-Man-adjacent anti-hero whose body has been hijacked by a wisecracking alien parasite.

Like its two predecessors, the new Venom eschews the smirky grandstanding style of the mainline Marvel films that arguably made them the definitive millennial franchise. Instead, it’s a yammeringly moronic, teenage-boy-pandering eyesore of the old school, with little to offer any viewer whose age or counting ability exceeds the low 20s.

That doesn’t make it better than, say, The Marvels or Deadpool & Wolverine. But at least it’s differently awful – one half-hearted (and crowbarred-in) “multiverses, eh?” gag aside, it exists entirely outside trends; perhaps even outside style itself. At this point, diehard fans might like to know that the film’s new antagonist – a silver-haired alien wizard – is Knull, while the rest of us should note its entertainment value is likewise.

The Last Dance was written and directed by Kelly Marcel, a long-time Hardy collaborator who also wrote (or co-wrote) the two earlier entries. That technically counts as a promotion, though it’s hard to imagine the woman who crafted the screenplay for Saving Mr Banks and injected some fun into the first Fifty Shades of Grey adaptation asking actors to deliver lines like Chiwetel Ejiofor’s “In my line of work, something terrible is always imminent” (well, you are in a Venom film) to Stephen Graham’s growled-through-a-porthole “The darkness has teeeeeeeeeth.” Graham returns as his detective character from the previous film, though spends most of this one locked up in a bunker, and makes us feel every last one of those nine Es while a computer-generated tear unconvincingly trickles down his cheek.

What happens in it, and why? The former question is just about answerable: as for the latter, good luck. After the events of 2021′s Let There Be Carnage, Hardy is hiding out in Mexico, but upon learning he’s a wanted man in the United States, he promptly decides to return there. New York City is the planned destination, but instead Hardy ends up wandering through the American southwest like Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas, albeit with a stompy, teeth-clenching gait that makes it look like poor Eddie experienced some sort of toilet-based mishap 10 miles ago, and hasn’t yet had a chance to sort himself out.

Area 51 comes into it, of course: Juno Temple works there on site as a scientist, while beyond the fence is a zany dad (Rhys Ifans) taking his family on an alien-spotting road trip. In keeping with the rest of the series, the visual effects are revolting – once again, Venom looks like somebody spilled Crème Egg filling on a knock-off xenomorph – while the action scenes are meaningless thrashing, and even the promising jokes (such as Venom possessing a horse) fall flat.

It has the nerve to conclude with a ‘best moments’ montage, inviting fans to reminisce about all that time they spent in the cinema wondering if Spider-Man was ever going to show up. As last dances go, it’s the Macarena in film form.

Rating: 1/5

Venom: The Last Dance is in New Zealand cinemas from Friday, October 25.