When "Venom: The Last Dance" rolls into theaters, it will conclude a trilogy of films that kicked off what seems to be a trend at Sony Pictures: Movies and stories set in a universe that’s adjacent to Spider-Man action, and focusing on Spider-Man villains, but they don’t include Spider-Man. This has allowed some of these films to take chances. Dakota Johnson’s "Madame Web," for example, told a bit of a prequel story that featured a newborn Peter Parker. Strange. And "Morbius…" well, Morbius did its own thing.<br /><br />And so, too, did the Venom franchise, once it found its footing. These movies largely have been driven by Tom Hardy’s sensibilities. They lean into a physical comedy that Hardy seems to appreciate, and Venom: The Last Dance includes more of the unexpected than even its immediate predecessors. But when I got the chance to interview Hardy and his director Kelly Marcel about Venom: The Last Dance, I found out that their biggest challenge was more of a technical one, and it involved the visual effects used to bring the symbiote to life.
