Many moons ago, there was a movie called American Reunion, the final chapter in the long saga begun with American Pie. That first film was a dumb sensation, a bawdy and (especially in hindsight) wildly misogynistic comedy that turned teenage boy horniness into a suburban Grand Guignol. There were a few direct sequels (plus many direct-to-DVD spin-offs) and then American Reunion, a movie that audaciously assumed we’d been emotionally connected to these characters all along. The film wanted us to be moved by the final appearance of, say, the Sherminator, someone most American Pie viewers had long forgotten existed at all.
I thought of that film while watching Venom: The Last Dance (in theaters October 25). Here is a third and, allegedly, final installment in a franchise that was a huge hit on first outing, then was pretty quickly relegated to the junk heap of pop ephemera. The sequel sucked, and premiered at a time when interest in comic-book movies was waning. (It still made a good deal of money, though.) Venom—about a journalist named Eddie (Tom Hardy) who is infected with a sentient alien entity—had its moment, and then that moment decidedly passed.
Yet Last Dance insists that audiences have been deeply invested this whole time, operating from the assumption that we will feel some swell of emotion as Eddie and Venom say goodbye and consider what a long, strange trip it’s been. Writer-director Kelly Marcel’s film does feature something like a plot, about a bad space guy wanting to get Venom and end life on Earth or whatever, but it’s mostly a goofy, oddly contemplative hang movie, a bit of senior-year nostalgia that, like American Reunion, has not earned its wistfulness.
The pleasure of the first Venom film was watching Hardy, a liquid enigma of an actor, risk embarrassment. As Eddie was taken over by Venom—or, as was often the case, the two shared body and consciousness at the same time; Hardy does the alien monster’s voice as well—Hardy contorted himself into a lurching, addled grotesque. It was funny and exciting, a gonzo performance in a genre that rarely encourages such things. But by the sequel, the shock had worn off and Hardy could only limply mimic past glory. In Last Dance, he has some antic business—a frenetic cocktail-making scene, a fraught horse ride that ends with the line “I can’t feel my balls”—but otherwise Hardy goes mellow, perhaps tired of all the strain of the last two films. While understandable, that exhaustion makes for a less than thrilling movie. If even a committed over-actor like Tom Hardy can’t get his blood up for this final adventure, then what hope does the rest of the movie have?
Marcel leans into Hardy’s weariness, pitching her debut directing effort as a shuffling, aimless ramble. In some ways, the weird mood of Last Dance is appreciated; what other comic-book movies allow for ruminative scenes in which a lead character looks into the abyss and the abyss looks back? But for the most part, the film’s offhanded, listless vibe feels like an insult to viewers, especially those who will pay actual money to see this thing. Last Dance seems almost begging to solely be watched on airplanes, in the soporific 90 minutes between dinner service and uneasy, upright sleep. It functions best as an accidentally found object rather than something deliberately sought out.
Whether or not you pay for the movie, at least a few talented actors got money for making it. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Juno Temple mill about in the background as, respectively, a military guy overseeing symbiote research under Area 51 and a passionate scientist with a backstory involving lightning. I am assuming that Temple’s character, Dr. Teddy Payne (ha!), is known to comic book readers, and that her presence in the movie means something bigger than what is communicated on screen. But this bizarrely edited and paced film has no room nor time to flesh that out. Maybe an alternate-universe version, one made with more care and patience, would explain that significance.
Speaking of alternate universes: Last Dance does gesture to its predecessor’s post-credits scene, which suggested that Eddie/Venom might one-day commingle with Spider-Man and the rest of the Marvel gang. But that gesture is brief and dismissive, quickly tossing aside any notion of multiverse unification because, I’m assuming, nobody actually wants to follow through on it. Here is another whimpering end of a once grand (if patchy) design, a synergistic dream now perhaps forever deferred.
Last Dance asks that we find this all rather poignant, but to also find that poignancy funny—because how incongruous it is, that a movie about a swearing alien should also go for sincerity! That is a tired old joke at this point, one that no longer endears. Had Deadpool & Wolverine not just made a boatload of money (sigh), I’d be tempted to say that Last Dance represents a final chapter for far more than just Eddie of San Francisco. But, alas, it is likely only a discrete ending for one digression from the superhero norm. The rest will continue on, inevitably headed toward their own glorious American reunion.
