Especially after Deadpool & Wolverine, the way The Last Dance basically gives the multiverse the middle finger is kind of refreshing and makes it feel like Sony and Marcel — who also wrote the first two Venom films — are trying to stay in a very specific lane, similar to Madame Web ’s.

The wildly successful Marvel series from Sony is a trio of comic book movies featuring Tom Hardy’s take on journalist Eddie Brock and his sassy symbiote sidekick.

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,