"Venom: The Last Dance": review

Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, with a horse possessed by his symbiote

Can demonic possession be funny if you do it with aliens? 2024's "Venom: The Last Dance" is a Marvel sci-fi/action flick, the third film in an ostensible trilogy of movies involving Venom, a.k.a. "The Lethal Protector," sort of an antihero who bears little resemblance to the wordless, menacing symbiote we first met in Sam Raimi's 2007 "Spider-Man 3." "The Last Dance" is directed by Kelly Marcel and stars Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clark Backo, and Andy Serkis.

The movie's backstory took me a moment to understand. Beginning in some alternate realm, we find out that the god of the symbiotes is a being called Knull (Serkis). The symbiotes somehow rebelled against their god and imprisoned him, and the only thing that can release Knull is something called a codex, which is formed whenever a symbiote bonds with a host, and that host is killed and brought back, thus allowing their life forces to fuse. But Knull has other servants than just the symbiotes: a race of vicious lizard-creatures called Xenophages (xeno = strange/alien; phage = eat) that are still obedient to Knull, and whom Knull tasks with searching the universe/multiverse for one copy of the codex. As it turns out, whenever Venom, the symbiote who has inhabited Eddie Brock (Hardy) for two movies, fully manifests himself as a muscular shell that surrounds Eddie, he becomes trackable to the Xenophages, one of which comes to Earth via the ability to generate a portal/wormhole à la Doctor Strange. Eddie/Venom and the Xenophage play cat and mouse for most of the movie.

Meanwhile, Area 55 scientist/xenobiologist Teddy Paine (Temple), who lost her brother in a childhood lightning accident, works a hundred feet underground with her assistant Sadie (Backo) in a facility that lies underneath Area 51. Area 51 is to be decommissioned, but Area 55, jointly operated by Paine's team of scientists and the US military under the command of General Rex Strickland (Ejiofor), remains in full swing, with a complement of symbiotes picked up from the crash that occurred in the first movie. The scientists are doing what they can to understand the symbiotes; the military, meanwhile, wants to find out how best to fight and kill them, and for much of the movie, they remain unaware of the Xenophage that's been sent to find Venom and take the codex.

The Venom movies are action-comedies, with the main running joke being that Venom inhabits Eddie Brock like a burly-but-friendly demon who has a taste for human brains and chocolate (which, like brains, contains phenethylamine, which the symbiotes thrive on). Eddie hears Venom's rumbling voice (also Tom Hardy) in his head but responds by speaking aloud; the alien apparently can't read his thoughts. Venom has learned a lot about life on Earth from his partnership with Eddie, and he generally likes the planet. Eddie allows Venom to eat bad guys' brains but convinced him early on (first movie) never to eat good people. With a neverending supply of bad people, Venom never goes hungry, and thus is born the notion of Venom/Eddie as "Lethal Protector." Venom can also bond with other living creatures; in one hilarious scene, Eddie and Venom try to rush across the country by bonding with a horse, which charges off madly, having temporarily become a fanged, muscular, tongue-whipping super-steed. When Venom manifests himself around Eddie, Eddie essentially becomes superpowered as well; he's bulletproof, strong, agile, and able to manifest black tentacles to grab opponents or to propel himself Spider-Man-like through the air. Venom functions as something like a barely contained id while poor Eddie, despite his own human wants and needs, must rein Venom in as a sort of superego. It's also never clear where, geographically, Venom is located on Eddie's body; he pops out partially or wholly at odd moments. It's also never clear where Venom's brain-eaten victims go once they've been consumed—are they metabolized instantly by the alien, or do they pass through poor Eddie's own digestive system?

There are actually way more questions than just these: a lot about Venom and his kind simply doesn't make sense. A bit like "Battleship," this is a turn-your-brain-off kind of movie if you want to enjoy it. And overall, I thought the movie wasn't bad. It comes to something of a sad end, and I've heard that Tom Hardy is iffy about reprising the Eddie Brock character, so I have no idea whether this trilogy might become a tetralogy. The movie also recycles actors who've played different roles in Marvel movies: Chiwetel Ejiofor had played Karl Mordo in "Doctor Strange," for example, and Rhys Ifans had played Dr. Curt Connors in "The Amazing Spider-Man" with Andrew Garfield.

While the entire Venom series has been hit-or-miss (you may recall I hated the first movie), it also hasn't been great, and I suppose I watched "Venom: The Last Dance" mainly because I'm a completist and not because I had any strong desire to see the film. This one had some moments of brilliant hilarity, but for the most part, it did little more than make me crack a smile. It's also possible that this movie has more logical holes in it than "Battleship" does, but there are plenty of online articles and videos poking holes in the film. 

I will mention a few problems, though. First, it was established in the initial movie that these alien symbiotes don't actually bond that readily with just any human being; there has to be some level of compatibility. But in "The Last Dance," several symbiotes escape their confinement and end up bonding willy-nilly with various human hosts. I also had to wonder why the Xenophages felt bound to obey Knull given that he was imprisoned and thus not in a position either to be a threat or to reward his servants (who apparently weren't intelligent enough to release Knull themselves). Third, I'm also not a fan of the misuse of the word codex, which normally describes a primitive sort of book in the real world. Fourth and related to that: why pursue the codex located on Earth when there must be literally billions of other codices elsewhere in the universe/multiverse? Fifth: why is Knull shown to be a humanoid while his worshipers and ex-worshipers are both decidedly nonhuman? Lastly, how did Knull's creations successfully rebel against him and imprison him? As a god, isn't Knull capable of smiting his creations for disobedience?

Despite these and other problems, though, "Venom: The Last Dance" was entertaining enough. Not enough for me to heartily recommend it, but enough for me to say that fans of the previous two movies (see here and here) will probably like this one, too.