The Hollywood truism that, sometimes, people like to have unfiltered trash fired into their eyes is doubly, triply, quadruply true in the case of the surreally chaotic Venom franchise, headed up by Tom Hardy as the most pitiful investigative reporter on the planet, Eddie Brock. Hardy plays Brock as if, in each new scene, he’s just been released from solitary confinement and is confused about his future prospects; he doesn’t know where he is, what he’s doing, and is leaning on his senses for quick answers. As a character Brock is completely incoherent and extremely unlikable (which is not to say he’s dislikable, more that Hardy makes it near-impossible to extend any genuine warmth towards him).
In this hashed-together third instalment, Brock and the smack-talking, Tom Waits-sound-alike alien symbiote that nests inside him known as Venom are signing things off in a haphazard blaze of glory, attempting to elude both the authorities and a race of time-hopping alien hellbeasts with mouths that double as wood chippers. For Venom/Brock have implanted within them a “codex” that will unlock the shackles of a really angry lank-haired dude who professes to be able to destroy everyone and everything, and of course wants to do just that.
The directorial reigns of this third and (hopefully!) final film have been ceded to series scribe Kelly Marcel, who dutifully drags things across the finish line. The film trades on groan-worthy wisecracks and the buddy-buddy schtick between our hero and his parasitic pal, and Hardy is clearly very open for being the butt of sundry humiliations in an attempt to curry favour with an audience. Yet for all his talents as a uniquely committed dramatic performer, a comic entertainer he is not, and so in order to arrive at the start of the story proper, we have to endure painful montages of, say, Brock going full Looney Tunes while riding a Venom-ised nag, all (badly) synched to Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’.
The film is, for the most part, a litany of bad, embarrassing or lowest-common-denominator choices, and it’s unsurprising that the love interest from previous films, Michelle Williams, has opted to cut and run with this new one. Dog-lover Hardy gets to kick things off by uncovering an illegal dog fighting ring and giving the perpetrators a taste of their own medicine, and his escapades take him through the Nevada wilderness and on to Area 55 (the “real” Area 51) via a penthouse suite on the Sunset Strip.
This being a Marvel-adjacent title (based on their comics but not part of the official MCU canon), there’s the usual thing of action occurring in completely depopulated areas and aesthetically unlovely computer graphics used to paste over many of the plot holes. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Juno Temple turn up as side players representing the clash between unchecked militaristic might and ethically-shaky scientific endeavour, but they’re not given enough screen time to really blossom.
As slipshot and lazy as it all is, it passes the time as air-headed escapism, and does manage to save all its vaguely-original moves for a bulky final act that delivers some decent spectacle. Part two of the franchise delivered on its ritual promise that “There Will be Carnage”, yet it will ultimately be the sound of the box office bells that will determine whether this is truly The Last Dance.
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ANTICIPATION.
The first two instalments of this franchise were the most guilty of guilty pleasures. 2
ENJOYMENT.
Overzealously commits to its comic Jeckyll/Hyde bit, but with diminished returns. 2
IN RETROSPECT.
Tom Hardy can draw a line under this chunk of his career and do and do something serious now. Can’t he? 2
Directed by
Kelly Marcel
Starring
Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Alanna Ubach, Chiwetel Ejiofor
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