In the final installment of the Venom trilogy, Tom Hardy tries to take what he has been given and again make something out of it. In his third attempt, he shows that for whatever reason, Sony still cannot take a character in Spider-man’s universe (and now by extension, Marvel’s Cinematic Universe) and get it right.
The synopsis of this movie is Eddie Brock and Venom are still on the run from the government framed for a murder he did not commit.
Quick pause: for those of you looking to see how this movie connects to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, make sure you watch the end credits of the last Spider-Man movie for it to make sense.
As Brock and Venom try to plan out which way they need to go to clear their name, they are attacked by symbiotes of Knull (Andy Serikis) and the US government lead by Rex Strickland (Chiwitel Ejifor…and before you ask, YES he was in the Dr. Strange movies. It will make sense!).
Thus, we go on a slightly more than a one hour and forty-five-minute ride in which we find out what Knull is and a strange codex he seeks out. Given credit where it’s due, Tom Hardy himself does a great job being Eddie Brock. He is a guy who, after a year of living with Venom has come to grips which his situation and how some decisions, he has no choices over.
The positives of this movie are that there are great flashes of humor, some fun quips and a few nice cameos. The movie does have a “Thelma and Louise” sense to it. The action sequences are fun and are borderline over the top on a video game level. The toss up is that there were a few sequences where we get cameos of the symbiotes in action but they are so poorly utilized especially Hala Finley as Echo.
That being said, the negatives are that the story is meandering, with plotholes big enough to fly a Boeing jet through and too reminiscent of Man of Steel’s codex story beat. The pacing doesn’t hold up as the story moves from set piece to set piece.
The bigger problem is that this movie is nothing more than a bridge movie that seeks to integrate Venom into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The biggest problem of them all which has hurt this entire trilogy is that someone high up on the food chain in Sony’s movie division didn’t get the memo of Venom being what his name implies: A monster and a menace. Sure, I get that Sony skipped over the fact that the symbiote that becomes Venom first integrated with Peter Parker et cetera and so on. But in three movies, they took a character that would have made a great foil in an awesome Spider-man trilogy in its own right and made him into a punch line. For myself, that’s the disheartening part of this whole franchise and most of Sony’s Spider-man live action movies. Nobody seems to know what makes these characters tick. I didn’t even mention the fact that Knull is set up similar to Thanos in which we see him for less than 5 minutes of screen time. After seeing this movie, I am not sure how much longer it will be before we get Spidey vs Venom or if it will be worth it when it happens.
If I had to recommend this movie to anyone it would be the most die-hard fans of Marvel movies. For anyone else, it’s not entertaining enough to warrant a theater ticket. If you want a more polished and closer characterization of Venom, Spider-man 2 on the Playstation 5 is what you want. If I could say one good thing about this movie is that it’s more watchable than The Crow remake.
Final Score C-
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