Organized chaos reigns in this final dance

At best, this third iteration, the final act in the trilogy, is a rather warped attempt at a serious superhero movie. It’s also pretty hard to reconcile this current version of Venom and Eddie Brock as bromantic partners, as opposed to the wild and brutal duo in the comics. This movie does nothing to feel natural or organic. Also, the film’s new antagonist – a silver-haired alien sorcerer – is Knull, so you don’t have to go far in search of the void. Knull doesn’t go beyond looking creepy – he’s clearly being set up as a future threat.

There are quite a few antagonists, all ill-defined characters lacking compelling motivations. That makes matchups and potential matchups uninteresting, to say the least.

The Last Dance, the third in an unlikely trilogy of solo adventures for Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), unlike the big Marvel movies, prefers to set its ambitions only as high as teenage fans. Hardy himself reportedly collaborated on the writing with writer-turned-director Kelly Marcel, who also penned the previous two entries.

The script is all over the place with several stories going nowhere. Given the nature of the first two iterations, I guess that was to be expected. In fact, the most telling dialogue here would be a toss-up between Chiwetel Ejiofor’s “In my line of work, something terrible is always imminent” and Stephen Graham’s “The darkness has teeth.”

Often frustrated journalist Eddie Brock and his alien symbiote Venom (backed by CGI) are pretty confused about where they want to go from here. Brock wanders around, aiming to make it to New York – ever since he realized he’s a “wanted” man. Knull is supposedly after Eddie/Venom for something precious he happens to have. While on the run from the cops and the US military, the pair must also escape the stalking monster. Juno Temple works at the soon-to-be-redundant Area 51 site as a scientist, and then there’s the crazy, reckless hippie dad (Rhys Ifans) who thinks nothing of putting his family in danger over time who is on a road trip to discover aliens.

Brock and Venom wreak havoc inside and out. When a drunk Brock wants to quit, Venom wants another drink. Brock even gets to do a surreal dream sequence in a casino with Ms. Cheng (Peggy Lu), an ABBA fan. Hardy plays Eddie with energy and has great comedic timing. It makes the obvious look funny.

Like its predecessors, this movie is a mess. Eddie and Venom may have come to terms with their divergent personalities, but the film franchise doesn’t seem to have learned that lesson. A goofy road escapade comedy meets a sci-fi alien invasion scheme and the result is a collision that feels “stuffy” and lackluster. Specifically, this series lacks Venom, and the visual effects seem too cheesy to be favored. The finale tries hard to end on an emotional note with a montage, and there are a few post-credit sequences meant to heighten the mystery of what’s to come.

Hardy’s last tango with a symbiote has a strange tone, a half-baked plot, and is loaded with jokes that, after a while, feel too boring to smile. The narrative is full of action and humorous humor – even so, it’s just not funny or entertaining!