After being involved in the writing of the previous Venom installments, Kelly Marcel co-writes this latest with Tom Hardy and steps into the director’s shoes. She makes the most of the opportunity, as this third and final Venom film pulls off the unexpected trick of being a sentimental, even emotional, film. And if you’ve been following the Venom franchise, you’ll know how schizophrenic that sounds. 

Best watched at an SM IMAX theater, the Venom franchise is known for being zany, off-the-wall, and action-ridiculous. Critics generally pan the films, but it can’t be denied that it’s found a global audience, ready to accept the preposterous premise, and this superhero that verges of the absurd. Audiences instinctively know it’s all in the name of fun, and don’t even attempt to put more meaning into the films. 

So here is Part III in the saga of Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), the luckless man whose body is occupied by Venom. In a Prologue centered on symbiote offspring sent on a quest to secure the codex, we meet arch-villain Knull. For some reason, not much is asked of Knull, but I’m made to understand that he is a villain who may soon cross over to another Marvel universe - and let's not forget that Venom himself originated within Spider-Man.

After this prologue, we were whisked to Mexico, then the Nevada desert, and arrived in Las Vegas, where we will eventually appear in Manhattan. So there’s a road trip Venom-style aspect to this outing, and Eddie and Benom even joke about this when they refer to each other as Thelma and Louise. Support vast includes military man Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), head scientist at a Area 51-type research facility, Dr. Payne (Juno Temple), and the returning Mulligan (Stephen Graham). 

A sidebar narrative strand has Martin (Rhys Ifans) and his family, who is a UFO fanatic. They encounter Eddie in the desert and befriend him. This leads to two sequences that help raise the emotional and comedic content of the film. The emotional one is the singalong of a David Bowie tune, while the comedy has raised a notch during the Las Vegas casino scene. 

Ultimately, the challenge facing Eddie/Venom is how elements from both worlds are out to eliminate the two. What happens, the sacrifices made, and the resolution arrives at are what makes this Venom possibly the best of the three - in that it doesn’t just rely on the energy and craziness of Hardy’s portrayal of Brock and Venom. I wonder if when this succeeds, as well as the first two films, this is indeed the last we see of Hardy’s Brock.