Tom Hardy goes out with Bonkers Blast

Wonder and Sony's Venom films have always been buddy comedies masquerading as superhero spectacles, and even more so Venom: The Last DanceA threequel For me it's infinitely less about the story than about the ridiculousness.

That is: Venom transforms into a horse, a frog and a fish, performs a choreographed dance number with his friend Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu), a supermarket owner, and sings “Tequila”, “Space Oddity” and “Dancing Queen”. “. ” with an enthusiasm that drives his human host Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) crazy. He also longs to see the Statue of Liberty and can't control himself at a slot machine in Las Vegas. When he loses badly at the latter, he angrily shouts, “Lady Luck is a moody bitch!”

That's the absurd tone of Venom: The Last Dance— hits theaters Oct. 25 — whose writer/director Kelly Marcel penned the script for the series' previous two entries. More competently designed and controlled than 2021 models Venom: Let There Be CarnageThis supposed franchise conclusion begins by recycling the post-credits scene Spider-Man: No Way Homewith Eddie and Venom trying to figure out the basics of the MCU in an alternate universe Mexican bar before being whisked away to their world, where Eddie is now (mistakenly) wanted for the murder of detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham).

Unable to return to San Francisco or they'll be arrested, Eddie and Venom decide to take a road trip to the Big Apple so Venom can see the sights. That's an exciting prospect for the alien symbiote, who makes sure to take a look at Marvel's latest plot point (“I'm so done with this multiverse shit!”) on its way out the door.

Venom and Eddie board a ride on a commercial flight in the most uncharacteristic way imaginable, but their journey is interrupted by a giant insectoid alien that attacks them from the outside of the spaceship. This monster is after the duo's “Code,” a MacGuffin created when Eddie previously died. He is only recognizable when Venom and Eddie fully fuse, and is the key to opening an intergalactic prison containing Knull, an ancient deity who gave birth to the symbiotes, only to make them turn and kill him to betray because he posed an apocalyptic threat.

Knull is a white-haired fiend who sits on a throne with his head bowed so his face is never visible. He is introduced in an all-CGI prologue that resembles a video game cutscene, and he is largely irrelevant to this action, aside from explaining why Venom and Eddie are being chased by the aforementioned beast.

For most Venom: The Last Dancethe linked protagonists race across the deserts of Nevada and Las Vegas trying to evade their enemy – a lackluster scenario made worse by the fact that this villain is a generic, personality-free creature straight out of Digital Casting 101.

Fortunately, Eddie and Venom remain an amusing couple, arguing incessantly over Venom's desire for fun and hunger for brains (he eats a quartet of them during an early confrontation with Mexican villains) and Eddie's procession of hangovers and frustrating inability to hold on to his shoes. Venom rarely lets off steam with a thoroughly funny one-liner, such as when, upon learning that two children are named “Echo” and “Leaf,” he instinctively exclaims, “A lifetime of therapy!” Nevertheless, their relationship with the Looney Tunes is the spark that keeps the material lively enough to never be completely boring.

Oh, Venom: The Last Dance is not just a two-man stand-up act; It's a feature that needs to provide an actual narrative. What it delivers is a load of nonsense, much of it involving Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a soldier who hunts symbiotes and uses them for Dr. Payne collects (Juno Temple). These two government employees used to work in Area 51 and are now operating out of the even more secret, underground Area 55 as it is shut down.

Rex doesn't trust the symbiotes and wants to eradicate them before they colonize the earth. Dr. Payne imagines that they are sympathetic creatures. Given Venom's joviality, it's no surprise that she's proven right when she fuses another captured symbiote with the not-dead detective Mulligan, who informs them that their species is on the run from Knull – and that he will destroy if the unstoppable tyrant the world escapes his borders.

Venom: The Last Dance does not refer to Ejiofor's previous Marvel appearance as Karl Mordo in Doctor Strange (presumably because this takes place in a different universe than the one at the time) and also wastes energy on Martin (Rhys Ifans), a hippie husband and father who drags his clan to Area 51 in a flower-power VW van. The result is a few lame jokes about Martin's organic-vegetarian ethos and Venom's appetite for flesh and blood, and on the whole it's a blatant time-waster designed to add to the colorfulness of the plot and give Eddie and Venom innocent friends save while of the chaotic final battle against Knull's henchmen.

Hardy repeats the over-the-top, exhausted and frustrated routine he perfected in the first two Poison efforts, and his whip-cracking exchanges with his symbiotic best friend continue to be charmingly crazy. The actor's gift for physical comedy and exaggerated facial expressions is put to the test, and Marcel invents a few new ways for him and Venom to work together during their tough fights.

The computer generated effects in Venom: The Last Dance are an improvement over those in the noggin-chewing giant's previous adventures, although they're best used not for monumental clashes but for silly scenes like Venom turning Eddie into a multi-tentacled puppet version Tom Cruise'S cocktail Bartender who spun bottles, smashed glasses, and downed drinks with mad fervor.

Venom: The Last DanceThe story is so disappointing that trying to portray it as a big farewell to Eddie and Venom fails. There's something unimportant about this argument, and the mid-credits and post-credits de facto allusions to future symbiote-centric sagas only further undermine the supposed finality of the matter. However, if this really is the pair's on-screen farewell, it at least ends on a suitably zany note of pure, unadulterated sentimentality – a final unexpected twist for a trilogy that, when it worked, embraced the inherent silliness of its comic source material.