By Jake Coyle, Film Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --For three films now, Tom Hardy has smushed Jekyll and Hyde into one strange and slimy double act. In a Marvel universe filled with alter egos that cloak stealthy superpowers, his investigative reporter Eddie Brock doesn’t transform. He shares his body with an ink-black alien symbiote (voiced with a baritone growl by Hardy), who sometimes swallows him whole, sometimes shoots a tentacle or two out, and always chipperly punctuates Eddie’s inner monologue.
These have been consistently messy, almost willfully bad movies, but Hardy’s performance has been a strangely compelling one-body buddy comedy. It’s one thing to throw a cape on and jump the sky. It’s another to run manically through the desert with an alien voice inside barking, as Eddie’s inner-alien does in the new “Venom: The Last Dance,” “Engage your core,” “Nice horsey” and “Tequila!”
The biggest dichotomy of these movies, though, isn’t the Eddie-symbiote split. It’s the contrast between Hardy’s funny, sometimes oddly touching performance and all of the CGI mess around him. There were moments of fun in the first two movies, but if “The Last Dance,” which opens in theaters Thursday, is the swan song for this spun-off, half-formed franchise, it confirms that the “Venom” films never quite figured themselves out.
In “The Last Dance,” Kelly Marcel, co-writer of the first two “Venom” films, takes over directing, following Andy Serkis (2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage”) and Ruben Fleischer (2018’s “Venom”). We rejoin Venom (the fusion of Eddie and his alien-entity soulmate) in Mexico where they’re on the run from the law. But a new threat is also emerging.
The movie opens with Knull (Serkis), the symbiote creator who, from some icky distant and dark corner of space, dispatches aliens to retrieve a “codex” found within Venom’s spine that, if obtained, will lead to the annihilation of both humans and symbiotes.
To me, bringing a typical comic book-style doomsday plot is about the last thing a “Venom” movie needs. The best sequences in the first two movies are no more complicated than Venom craving lobster or ordering pizza. Smaller stakes better suit its warped comedy. The touchstone for these movies shouldn’t be the Marvel playbook but old episodes of “The Odd Couple.”
Instead, we’re thrown into a pretty immediately boring Area 51 setting where an elaborate lab headed by Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) studies the symbiotes it has trapped with the help of a military division led by Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor, lending more gravitas to the movie than it deserves). Once the alien insect things arrive seeking the codex, there’s plenty of running and fighting, with a UFO-enthusiast family in a VW bus (Rhys Ifans plays the dad) thrown into the mix. The ensuing battle ultimately, as the title promises, threatens to divide Venom for good.
But the promise of the “Venom” series, really, is that the mainline Marvel stuff would intrude less here. This is a B-movie realm of the multiverse with little appetite for solemnity, nobility or two-and-half-hour running times. They can feel a little like tossed-off knockoffs, which is both their appeal and their frustration.
I kept rooting for the surprisingly lifeless “The Last Dance” to pull way back on its save-the-world plot (and its CGI) and lean more into its most potent effect: Hardy’s split-personality double act. If this is to be a last hurrah โ which, granted is a dubious idea for anything even adjacently connected to “Spider-Man” โ it’s a shame that we never saw more of Venom in daily life. Eddie is a journalist after all. One can only imagine how he and the symbiote might have debated more pressing concerns than the fate of the universe, like Oxford commas.
“Venom: The Last Dance,” a Columbia Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images and strong language. Running time: 110 minutes. Two stars out of four.
Microsoft Report Says Efforts By Russia, Iran and China To Sway U.S. Voters May Escalate
Foreign adversaries have shown continued determination to influence the U.S. election โ- and there are signs their activity will intensify as Election Day nears, Microsoft said in a report Wednesday.
Russian operatives are doubling down on fake videos to smear Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, while Chinese-linked social media campaigns are maligning down-ballot Republicans who are critical of China, the company's threat intelligence arm said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Iranian actors who allegedly sent emails aimed at intimidating U.S. voters in 2020 have been surveying election-related websites and major media outlets, raising concerns they could be preparing for another scheme this year, the tech giant said.
The report serves as a warning โ building on others from U.S. intelligence officials โ that as the nation enters this critical final stretch and begins counting ballots, the worst influence efforts may be yet to come. U.S. officials say they remain confident that election infrastructure is secure enough to withstand any attacks from American adversaries. Still, in a tight election, foreign efforts to influence voters are raising concern.
Microsoft noted that some of the disinformation campaigns it tracks received little authentic engagement from U.S. audiences, but others have been amplified by unwitting Americans, exposing thousands to foreign propaganda in the final weeks of voting.
Russia, China and Iran have all rejected claims that they are seeking to meddle with the U.S. election.
"The presidential elections are the United States' domestic affairs. China has no intention and will not interfere in the US election," the Chinese Embassy said in a statement.
"Having already unequivocally and... Read More