While Sony-Columbia’s other attempts – Morbius, Madame Web – to spin films out of subsidiary Spider-Man characters they own have crashed and burned, their take on 1990s Spider-baddie Venom has defied logic and criticism and stuck around for three weirdly endearing movies. A lot of this is down to Tom Hardy’s commitment to the mini-franchise, in which he stars opposite himself as down-at-heel journalist Eddie Brock and toothy alien Venom. The oily maniac is bonded to the human’s body and they are partners in a bickering double act which sometimes calms down enough for them to perform unconventional super-heroics. Where Spider-Man leaves crooks webbed up for the cops to imprison, Venom bites off their heads.
This time out, even nastier spiny aliens arrive on Earth seeking a mcguffin which will free an imprisoned evil overlord called Knull to do terrible things across the universe. This gizmo (‘the codex’) shows up as a glowing beacon whenever Eddie and Venom are fused and doing their heroic thing.
Hardy has so much fun – maybe playing both Kray Twins set him down this path –it’s hard for anyone else to get a look-in, though there’s a sweet return from series regular Peggy Lu in a new context and Rhys Ifans is strangely sweet as a UFO nut who wishes he could meet a real alien and leads a back-of-the-van singalong of ‘Space Oddity’ which bumps this up a whole star in the rating.
Sadly, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Juno Temple – as a gruff general and a humane xenobiologist – join the departed Michelle Williams in being massively overqualified and underused, though Temple looks astonishing when she (briefly) gets her own sinuous symbiote.
Overloaded with cartoonish CGI action scenes and non-stop patter, this is never less than entertaining – though it’s also pretty disposable. It calls itself the last film in the trilogy but has two end credits sting scenes promising more developments.
Venom The Last Dance is out in cinemas now