Hartford
Mindless Monsters Say Good-bye For now
by | Oct 27, 2024 2:27 pm
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Posted to: Film
Venom: The Last Dance
Apple Cinemas Xtreme
Hartford
Oct. 26, 2024
I’m torn. Venom: The Last Dance is not a good movie. It’s not a bad movie either.
Let me try to explain.
The Last Dance has a simple enough plot: The creator of the symbiotes wants to be freed from his prison to destroy all life. To do that, he has to find Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom, who have something called a codex which he needs. He sends a bunch of monsters to find the duo, and then we go from there.
The Last Dance is that it’s just not a lot of fun unless Eddie Brock and Venom are on the screen. Much has been made of Marvel movies and their penchant for quippy dialogue that undermines drama and loss, but TLD has the opposite problem. There’s almost no humor in the film that doesn’t come directly from the interactions between Brock and Venom.
That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, except that we spend large swaths of the movie separated from our heroes. There’s a lot of time spent re-explaining the plot of the movie to General Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Dr. Teddy Paine (Juno Temple) and Sadie (Clark Backo) as they argue over the fate of the symbiotes in the remains of Area 51.
Strickland is humorless, perceiving the symbiotes as a threat from the outset and showing no gradations of characterization outside of being a stern military man. Dr. Paine is similarly without humor, traumatized by an event from her childhood where her brother was killed by the most conspicuous lightning strike ever. Only Sadie is given any kind of levity, in the form of a Christmas tree pin that her mother gave her.
Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom (Tom Hardy)
It’s a shame, because the Venom movies work best when they don’t take themselves seriously, when they play off of the odd-couple energy of Brock and Venom. At least in the second film, Let There Be Carnage, an actor with the chops of Woody Harrelson was game to chew scenery and have an obvious blast as an over-the-top villain that gave audiences something else to enjoy besides Tom Hardy literally talking to himself (as he does the voice for Venom as well).
The villain in TLD is so forgettable that the audience doesn’t even see his full face until the end of credits scene. I can’t even remember his name. And the mindless monsters called xenophages he sends to get the thingy which will free him from his prison on an alien world are technologically impressive, but offer only slightly less for Hardy to bounce off of dramatically than the human cast does.
The one bright spot is the alien-hunting family that Brock runs into in the middle of the desert. Led by Rhys Ifans’ endearingly kooky Martin, the family presents a realistic and funny depiction of hippies, their surly teenage daughter Echo (Hala Finley, who did great with the little bit of work she had) and their happy-go-lucky son Leaf (Dash McCloud in a great performance). Leaf comes to represent the heart of the movie, as Venom and Brock discuss the way that Brock’s interactions with him prove the kind of father he could have been.
The movie at least realizes that its best parts are when Venom and Brock are on screen, and quintuples down on that prospect in the climactic battle, where an army of symbiotes appear to take on the invading xenophages. Sadie kicks butt as a Venom-type symbiote, and even Dr. Paine is given an opportunity to shine. It makes me wish that more of the movie had been interactions between symbiotes, watching as Eddie Brock tries to navigate a series of new headaches.
All that said … I still like this movie somehow. It’s not good, but I hesitate to call it bad. It could be funnier, it could have a better villain, it could have more interesting human characters. But it gave me Tom Hardy having fun in the conclusion to probably the most unlikely superhero trilogy ever. So yeah, that’s enough. And despite the title, I very much doubt this is the last time we’ll see these two on screen. As the movie says, this is only goodbye for now.
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Jamil is going on vacation. See you in November!
