Venom: The Last Dance (2024) – Film Review
Director: Kelly Marcel
Cast: Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Certificate: 15
By Roger Crow
Tom Hardy’s final turn as Eddie Brock, the journalist consumed by a shape-shifting ET, should have been just another fun knockabout threequel, but it turned out to be far more than that.
Written and directed by Brit Kelly Marcel, one of the brains behind the first two Venom movies, she barely got a mention in UK media when the movie repeatedly topped the US box office last year. The fact it also generated almost $500million was also weirdly missing from many newspaper columns or online news reports in Blighty. A decade ago, Kelly had also adapted Fifty Shades of Gray, which did insane box office numbers on a $40million budget. And the Venom trilogy is also about a toxic co-dependent relationship, but there’s no kinky stuff. Just a lot of laughs, some epic smack downs, and most remarkably of all, a huge beating heart at the centre of it.
Given that title, you know things aren’t going to end well as Eddie and his symbiotic, head-chomping buddy go on the run; befriend a family of hippies, and cross paths with military and science types (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Juno Temple adding gravitas and kooky boffin brilliance).
“Sucker punch”
The whole thing orbits around Area 51 (naturally) and Las Vegas, which is obviously one of the most cinematic places on Earth. And when Tom Hardy is wearing a tux, the film ramps up a gear.
There are laugh-out-loud funny moments, an unforgettable rendition of Major Tom in a VW camper, and some glorious set pieces involving assorted symbiotic protagonists and antagonists.
There’s also a MacGuffin: a ‘codex’, which is like Lord of the Rings’ one ring. It’s a homing beacon for bad things from another dimension basically, and when Eddie becomes Venom, off goes that alien magnet klaxon.
Venom: The Last Dance is reminiscent at times of 1986 mega flop Howard the Duck, but far funnier, and with a sucker punch ending which generates that strange feeling missing from many CGI-heavy smackdowns these days. You actually feel something for Brock and his alien alter ego.
“Great fun”
Rhys Ifans, who previously played Curt Connors, aka The Lizard in a couple of Spider-Man movies, is great as the hippy dad in search aliens; it does make you wonder if it’s Connors in an alt-dimension.
So, 2024 began with the Marvel letdown Madame Web, co-written and directed by a Brit (SJ Clarkson), and ended with a Marvel smash, also written and directed by a British woman. No prizes for guessing which movie the critics loved to rip apart, and it wasn’t the final Venom movie. And yes, Madame Web was rubbish, but it didn’t deserve the vitriolic assault it received, while The Last Dance, and its cast and crew, did deserve far more praise than it received, especially on home turf.
Regardless of the backstage drama, the bottom line is the Venom swansong is great fun, the best of the trilogy, and one of the strangest buddy road movies you’ll ever see, written and directed by a filmmaker who has gone from strength to strength since her masterful screenplay duties on Saving Mr Banks. I can’t wait to see what Kelly Marcel and Tom Hardy do next. And yes Venom, I will miss you. Something I never thought I’d commit to page.
Adopted Yorkshireman Roger Crow developed a passion for film and TV in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been a published film and TV reviewer since the 1990s; a world travel and restaurant critic since the noughties, and for the past decade has assessed the pros and cons of live gigs and theatre productions around the UK. His ideal day would involve reviewing a performance of Bat Out of Hell, followed by a Pad Thai while being serenaded by Texas on a cruise around Europe.
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