Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10
Cast: Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, Clark Backo, Alanna Ubach, Cristo Fernández, Jared Abrahamson, Hala Finley, Dash McCloud, Andy Serkis, Reid Scott.
Like many Sony attempts to fulfil the needs of the Marvel fans’ expectations of how the surrounding Spider-Man players would fare in their own film, the downgrading of Venom over time has seriously demolished what was perhaps the finest character outside of the MCU, and whilst the initial story of the alien symbiote who melded with Eddie Brock was startlingly good fun, offering Tom Hardy the chance to play a part for fun, in its third outing, Venom: The Last Dance, the enjoyment has become at best a middling affair, given a small dosage of high craft in its appearance, but very little else to give the creature, or Tom Hardy, the gravitates they both deserve.
Venom: The Last Dance maintains the bond between the pairing of alien and human, but it is everything else around it, from lack of depth in the supporting cast to the fairly mundane narrative that gives the film such a lacklustre appeal.
Credit must go to Tom Hardy for continuing to believe in the character, but it perhaps to the shaming of Sony and Marvel combined that they could not find common ground in the same way they did with Spider-Man and bring Venom, the truly terrifying anti-hero and finest example of Todd McFarlane’s work within Marvel, out from the Sony closet and into the realm of the MCU. The possibilities that have been, so far, ignored and almost as graphic novels go, plainly criminal.
The issues of the film are not helped by the plethora of symbiote creatures in board this last veritable tango, a mish mash of colourful entities to whom very little is cared of, and whilst Carnage was given the right amount of treatment in the second film, to have so many of these creatures on screen fighting a third devastating alien, was in all honesty too much for the fan to have their feelings for any particular favourite given a dose of effortless pleasure.
Despite the attempts to make Venom relatable, likeable, one suspects for merchandising reasons rather than aesthetics, the nature of the beast is such that should the character ever be seen in the MCU, then it requires a deep thinking attitude of how best to be portrayed; and surely as an antagonist is the best way forward, one not so warm, not so friendly, but the personification of anguished death to which it was originally presented; allow the creature to sit alongside Ridley Scott’s Alien as a truly terrifying example of cinema’s ability to portray horror from space.
A muddled end to the trilogy, one that came nowhere near its original power, Venom: The Last Dance is really for those to whom completing a film marathon is their best use of time, but for the remainder, one to have best avoided.
Ian D. Hall