The saga of Eddie Brock and Venom is over, at least for now. Venom: The Last Dance concludes the Venom trilogy with a deeply strange, silly, gooey, and surprisingly touching conclusion. It may not have been an ending, or even a film, that critics wanted from a franchise they have overwhelmingly derided since its initial offering, that of 2018. Poison. But it's an ending that knows exactly what it wants to be. And it's certainly an ending that Tom Hardy earned.
To be honest, I love the Poison movie. From its penchant for '90s comic book silliness, to its trappings of B-grade monster movies, to its insistence on breaking the superhero movie formula with every entry, these films stand out in a superhero market dominated by a increasingly complicated tradition.
Don't get me wrong, those lore-rich features can be great. But it's refreshing to have films that don't take themselves seriously and know exactly who their audience is. This is not to say that critics or audiences who don't like these films are wrong, or to imply that some nonsense exists among critics and fans. Film criticism is as subjective as ever, and when it comes to this particular film and franchise, the stakes are low.
But the game being played is fascinating because its rules remain elastic. If making superhero movies is like a game of poker, meant to win the biggest pot possible, then… Poison movies are the equivalent of betting some Monopoly money, a Rolex, and a few marbles just for fun. It's not the dish you expect, but in the end it's still worth something, even if it upsets the status quo.
Much of that sense of elasticity comes down to Hardy's passion for the character and hands-on approach to directing the series. Sure, many actors are passionate about their roles as superheroes and supervillains, but Hardy agreed to play Venom because of his son's love for the character, in an era when every rising star was asked to do a superhero movie because it was the right thing to do. Do.
What could easily have been just a job for an Oscar-nominated actor of Hardy's caliber instead became a passion project, with Hardy bringing with him a variety of acting influences and techniques, and his longtime friend date and creative partner Kelly Marcel, who wrote and produced each entry and directs the latest installment.
There is a certain denial of ego at play with Hardy in these films. He's not afraid to be silly, jump into a tank of live lobsters, get squirted with ketchup, or get dragged across the desert, all while making “a voice.” But one admirable quality of Hardy's as a performer is his refusal to be trapped.
Months after giving one of the best performances of the year as Johnny in American author Jeff Nichols' film The motorcyclistshe can stumble with a shoe and a voice in his head as Eddie Brock. Even more significantly, both characters, stricken with heartbreak over the lives they could have had and the people they could have been, are handled with the same measure of love and sincerity by the actor.
Best scene in Venom: The Last Dancethe one I keep coming back to, is not an action sequence, but a quiet moment that Eddie and Venom experience hitchhiking in a hippie family's trailer where Eddie contemplates existentialism, legacy and the people around he as the family's rendition of David Bowie's “”Space Oddity” plays in the distant background. Venom says, “Sometimes I think we could have been happy with a life like this,” and a few minutes later, “You would have been a good dad, Eddie.” This is the perfect distillation of the franchise, for a character who longed for normality and companionship and an actor whose role as a father helped shape these films.
These Venom films, while silly and critically unloved, are not simply a reflection of the comic character first popularized in the Spider-Man comics, but of Hardy himself and Venom: The Last Dance it could be the purest expression of it. Hardy's well-known love of dogs informs the first major action sequence of the Marcel film, in which Venom defeats a gang of criminals behind a dog-fighting operation, freeing the dogs afterwards. Hardy's Venom vocals, as he recently told MTV, were largely inspired by his love of the hip-hop music he grew up with. Even the queer-code relationship between Eddie and Venom feels like an extension of Hardy's lens of acceptance and desire not to place people or art in boxes.
Some argue that the Poison The franchise was an IP-driven pursuit by Sony to capitalize on the rights to Spider-Man, but I'd argue that whatever the impetus was, they've proven to be far more creative and personal than some of the studio outputs that the fans love it. . Despite all the mess, these Venom films have become increasingly tied to the people who make them, rather than the studios that sell them.
We're in an era where studios are quick to respond to fan criticism. Don't like the tone of this? We promise to do better in the next one. Don't like the casting for this character? We'll see what we can do. Too smart? Of course we cannot admit this publicly, but we will ensure that any obvious element of “wakeness” is eliminated.
It's an age of fan demand and power when it comes to most IPs. However, Tom Hardy simply doesn't care about such things when it comes to Venom. He makes the films he wants, for the people he wants, with the people he wants, and if you're okay with it, great, if not, oh well.
There was no concerted effort to make the films less silly. There has been no concerted effort to adhere to the tone of the more recent Venom comics, to push for an R rating, or to make films in an effort to fan service and comic book accuracy. This strategy has proven to be a financially successful model and has garnered a global audience of Venom enthusiasts, which has worked well for Sony, more so than any other entry in Sony's Spider-Man universe thus far.
There are definitely fans who care about the studio's profits and ownership rights. But what's most valuable is the fact that we got this profoundly strange, sometimes messy, astonishingly touching and outrageous trilogy of superhero films that feel tied to human desires.