These have been consistently dirty, almost deliberately bad movies, but Hardy’s performance has been a strangely compelling one-body comedy. It’s one thing to wear a cape and jump into the sky. Running madly through the desert with an alien voice inside barking is another, as seen in Eddie’s inner-alien performances in the new “Venom: The Last Dance,” “Engage Your Core,” “Nice Horsey” and “Tequila!” I do.

However, the biggest conflict of these films isn’t the Eddie-symbiote split. It’s the contrast between Hardy’s funny, sometimes strangely poignant performance and the mess of CGI that surrounds him. The first two movies had moments of entertainment, but if “The Last Dance,” which opens in theaters Thursday, is the swan song for this ready-made, half-baked franchise, then it confirms that the “Venom” movies Never calmed down, understood myself.

In “The Last Dance,” Kelly Marcel, co-writer of the first two “Venom” films, takes over directing duties, succeeding Andy Serkis and Ruben Fleischer. We rejoin Venom in Mexico where he is on the run from the law. But a new threat is also emerging.

The film begins with the symbiote creator Knull sending aliens from some strange distant and dark corner of space to retrieve a “codex” found within Venom’s spine which, if obtained, will Will lead to the destruction of both humans and symbiotes.

To me, bringing a typical comic book-style doomsday story is the last thing a “Venom” movie needs. The best scenes from the first two films are no more complicated than craving venom lobster or ordering pizza. Smaller stakes are better suited to its twisted comedy. The touchstone for these movies should not be the Marvel playbook but old episodes of “The Odd Couple.”

Instead, we are thrown into a very boring Area 51 setting, where an elaborate laboratory headed by Dr. Teddy Payne studies trapped symbiotes with the help of a military division led by Rex Strickland. Once the alien bug things arrive looking for the codex, there’s quite a bit of running around and fighting, with a UFO-enthusiast family in a VW bus thrown into the mix. As promised in the title, the ensuing battle ultimately threatens to divide Venom forever.

But the promise of the “Venom” series is really that the core Marvel content will be less intrusive here. It’s a B-movie realm of the multiverse with little appetite for seriousness, levity, or a two-and-a-half-hour running time. They can feel somewhat like throwaway knockoffs, which is both their appeal and their frustration.

I continued to favor the surprisingly lifeless “The Last Dance” returning to its world-saving plot and leaning into its most powerful influence: Hardy’s split-personality double act. If this is one last hurray – which is a questionable idea for anything “Spider-Man” related – then it’s a shame we never saw more of Venom in daily life. After all, Eddie is a journalist. One can only imagine how he and the symbiote would have debated more serious concerns than the fate of the universe like the Oxford comma.

The Columbia Pictures release “Venom: The Last Dance” is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for intense scenes of violence and action, bloody images and strong language. Running time: 110 minutes. Two out of four stars.

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