Over the course of three Venom films, Tom Hardy has carried out so much to convey a modicum of gravitas to a profoundly foolish story a couple of parasitic alien whose place within the Marvel universe cosmology has by no means made loads of sense. No less than to these not schooled in all issues MCU. The truth that the trilogy has prevented taking itself too severely has been each its saving grace and its limitation. It’s laborious to speculate an excessive amount of within the regular bombast and mayhem and CG smackdowns when the movies come off as goofball larks with means fewer tooth than the large pointed chompers on the title character.

Then again, Hardy brings ample appeal (and witty voice work) to his symbiote-inhabited character’s inner battle between id and superego to make every entry diverting sufficient, even when they go away little aftertaste. And so it goes with Venom: The Final Dance, which caps the trilogy by going gleefully out by itself.

Graduating from her position as a author and producer on 2018’s Venom and 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage to first-time characteristic director right here, Kelly Marcel jettisons any Spider-Man adjacency and tries her hand at one thing nobody on the previous movies has managed to do. Working from a narrative she developed with Hardy, Marcel offers Venom — because the goopy alien organism that took up residence within the physique of Hardy’s former investigative TV reporter Eddie Brock is understood — an origin story of types.

In a swiftly sketched prologue, we meet a straggly-haired ghoul identified to comic-book aficionados as Knull (an unrecognizable Andy Serkis, director of the trilogy’s final entry) who identifies himself with lugubrious grandiosity as “god of the void.” Seething about his symbiote kids having betrayed and imprisoned him in some darkish cavern in a distant universe, Knull dispatches a bunch of fearsome creatures referred to as xenophages, big spidery-reptilian issues that like to snack on symbiotes.

However Knull doesn’t simply need these ingrate offspring slaughtered. He wants a key of their possession to flee his jail. “Discover me the Codex!” he bellows on the critters. In fact, the Codex is to not be discovered on any random symbiote. No prizes for guessing who has it.

The story picks up with Eddie and Venom drunk in a bar in Mexico, having gone on the run after eliminating Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady and his symbiote, Carnage, within the final film. Their epic conflict apparently alerted Knull to the presence of symbiotes on Earth. An irrelevant multiverse detour lands Eddie and Venom again within the bar a while later, primarily so the symbiote can manipulate his host into channeling Tom Cruise in Cocktail — with these slithery further limbs doing most injury to the tune of “Tequila,” naturally.

Venom leaping in on the only real lyric of that Nineteen Fifties jazz instrumental is an effective indication of what’s to return, as Hardy and Marcel milk the odd-couple dynamic and jokey banter for optimum laughs. The symbiote at this level is so playful and quippy he’s virtually Audrey II from Little Store of Horrors, minus the urge to eat his one true pal. However Venom sobers up in each sense of the phrase because the story progresses, pointing towards what appears an inevitable separation of host and visitor and yielding moments of tender sentimentality.

First, nevertheless, Eddie learns he’s wished for questioning regarding the obvious loss of life of Detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham) in San Francisco. Eddie and Venom strive hotfooting it to New York Metropolis, however a skirmish with a xenophage whereas they’re hitching a journey on a passenger airplane lands them within the Nevada desert as an alternative.

They develop into close to Space 51, a lately decommissioned web site about to be destroyed, the place the federal government has been conducting controversial exams on aliens. In a secret containment facility 100 toes beneath the floor, the place one thing referred to as the Imperium Program is being carried out, a few skinny secondary characters are launched, performed by over-qualified actors not given sufficient to do.

One is Military Particular Forces brass Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the opposite is symbiote whisperer scientist Dr. Payne (Juno Temple). Dr. Payne believes the aliens have come to Earth fleeing one thing and in search of a protected haven, however Strickland is satisfied their purpose is migration and planetary occupation.

UFO-obsessed hippie vacationer Martin (Rhys Ifans) and his household give Eddie a elevate of their camper van alongside the Extraterrestrial Freeway, the place they’re hoping to see some alien motion. They get greater than they bargained for as soon as a xenophage sniffs out Venom, and Knull sends a complete lot extra of them to wash up. And to convey again that rattling Codex — to not be confused with the identically termed however narratively unrelated Codex that Michael Shannon’s Basic Zod was screaming for in Man of Metal.

That is the purpose at which the motion explodes into chaos and Marcel’s inexperience within the director’s chair begins to point out. The rampaging xenophages are a formidable weapon of mass destruction, however the movie sacrifices some pleasure by giving Venom solely anonymous, faceless adversaries — except you rely the gnarly god of the void stewing away in area.

Eddie and Venom get virtually sidelined in all this. A lot of the resistance is left to symbiotes launched from the lab, which immediately discover appropriate hosts within the Imperium staffers and sometimes handle to flee the ravenous jaws of the xenophages. Probably the most memorable of them — OK, the one memorable one — is Dr. Payne’s lab colleague Sadie (Clark Backo), who unleashes some severe badassery as soon as she’s remodeled.

This being the concluding chapter of a trilogy, all of it results in an emotional catharsis that can little question fulfill followers of the sooner films, with a candy contact of tacky humor to offset the melancholy. However the one factor that actually issues on the way in which there may be the affectionately tetchy rapport between Eddie and Venom, who’ve gotten progressively extra comfy in one another’s skins over the 12 months they’ve been collectively. (Although I can’t say I didn’t miss the grounding presence of Michelle Williams’ Anne, the misplaced love of Eddie’s life, now utterly out of the image.)

A lot of the shtick includes Eddie taking part in straight man to the symbiote cutup, whether or not introducing Venom to playing in a humorous scene at a Vegas slot machine (“Girl Luck is a fickle slut!”) or enduring a household singalong to “House Oddity,” accompanied by Martin strumming a guitar within the van. There’s much less of Venom taking up at will than Eddie giving his alien pal the nod each time superhuman power is required — as an illustration, in an pleasant early scene with a band of Mexicans operating unlawful canine fights. “Hola, bitches,” says Venom, because the tentacles unfurl to take them out.

It makes for an amusing detour once they meet San Francisco comfort retailer proprietor Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) in Vegas, the place she has develop into such a excessive curler at a resort on line casino that she instructions the penthouse suite. That enables for a daffy interlude wherein Mrs. Chen and Venom minimize a rug to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” It’s cute, however doesn’t precisely up the stakes when it comes to impending doom.

The Venom films have all been considerably constricted by their PG-13 pointers, which means the hazards are invariably a tad muted and the casualties barely register. The chief exception to that in The Final Dance is a pulse-racing sequence wherein Strickland’s SWAT staff, armed with plenty of cool gadgetry, pursues Eddie down whitewater rapids towards a waterfall in a bid to seize Venom.

That scene additionally offers the results staff license to do what they do finest. Positive, the xenophages are spectacular creepy-crawlies, however the principle attraction is the transformation of the symbiotes from writhing mobile blobs into gleaming colossi with killer grins and tongues that put Gene Simmons to disgrace. Venom’s shape-shifting skills alone present loads of leisure — He’s a parachute! He’s a horse! He’s a fish! — that ought to enchantment particularly to children within the viewers.

The motion is greater and louder, if at instances messier, than that of its predecessors, however that is additionally the cuddliest of the three films. It reveals each Eddie and Venom to be outdated softies of their protectiveness towards Martin’s children (Hala Finley and Sprint McCloud) and much more so of their cozy companionship, a symbiosis that’s virtually a wedding.