2018’s Venom was something different, as it gave the popular Spider-man villain a fun origin story, made entertaining through a good sense of humor and a lite lead performance from its star, the usually intense and dour Tom Hardy. While the 2021 sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, failed to live up to its exciting title, becoming too silly and lacking in any promised carnage. Venom: The Last Dance, takes a rusty shovel and completely buries the trilogy in a dumpster fire of terrible ideas and some seriously sloppy filmmaking.

The superhero film boom of the last decade and a half isn’t as strong as it once was. Where a new Marvel film used to be an event, the studios drowned fans in a tsunami of, quite simply, too many movies. In the beginning, producing two or three comic flicks per year seemed to work, giving fans something to salivate over and not yet over-saturating theaters with the same type of product. Somewhere along the line, the studios took their greed into the stratosphere, cranking out film after film after film based on popular comic books and superheroes; linking characters, mixing lore, and creating the “multiverse”. Doing so many films cut from the same cloth quickly became tiresome, as they all began to resemble one another and quality took a drastic hit.

In 2024, these types of films aren’t the guaranteed box office gold they once were. The first Venom outing was a tremendous worldwide success and promised a new trend of something different from the studios. Unfortunately, the “something differents” were films such as Eternals, The Marvels, and Madame Web; each finding a cold reception. The studios started to lose their faithful disciples due to silly scripts, bad casting, and subpar CGI.

Perhaps the Venom trilogy could have been a shining jewel that would rise above the familiar comic boom of the past few years. Maybe, just maybe, the final film in the trilogy could leave fans with a raucous good time. Perchance to dream, as Venom: The Last Dance slams the lid shut on Hardy’s hopefully only foray into the comic book universe. The final result is a subpar mess of a film that leans too heavily on tired comedic beats while embarrassing itself by trying to end on a half-assed Marvel-meets-Terms of Endearment finale.

Kelly Marcel (who wrote the first two Venom movies) makes her feature film debut, but the final Eddie/Venom adventure is a rudderless ship drifting into the abyss. It is sad to learn that Tom Hardy co-wrote the film with director Marcel. The script is abysmal. There is no rhyme or reason to the design of this film. The first half is pedestrian exposition while the second half is your standard special effects not-so-extravaganza filled with mindless and uninventive action that hammers the audience’s senses.

Venom: the Last Dance begins with a dull exposition from the dreaded Knull (voiced by Andy Serkis), the evil whatever-the-hell-he-is who apparently created the symbiotes. The moment is chock full of subpar FX as the uninteresting character drones on to his minion creatures about “The Codex”. A key that will free him from wherever-the-hell-he-is. To get the key, Eddie and Venom must be full-on combined. As Knull sends his servants to do his bidding, the plot thickens.

As Eddie and Venom plan a buddy trip to New York City, things take a turn. The two end up in Las Vegas and are pursued by monsters, the feds, and a power hungry military man (a slumming Chiwetel Ejiofor). Add to the mix, two scientists trying to get to the bottom of the symbiotes (Juno Temple and Clark Backo, also slumming) and a hippie family, led by dad Rhys Ifans (equally slumming and channeling Tom Petty), and and everyone is on a collision course to something that should have been exciting. 

There are a lot of characters crammed into the film’s 1 hour and 49 minute running time, but not one of them adds anything special to the story. The clandestine goings on in Area 51 (in the days before it is decommissioned) sound promising but, again, the screenplay never makes anything interesting out of the plot points it creates nor the characters that populate them. A subplot about a trip to Las Vegas seems shoehorned in and wildly out of place in the scheme of it all. 

The real head-scratcher is how this final bow turns Venom into a gentle monster who worries about mortality. One moment he is being told he cannot eat a family and the next he is the roaring head-muncher we have known for decades. While it is admirable to add a little seriousness to the end of Eddie and Venom’s relationship, the script fumbles it. Like most of the film, it just doesn’t play. 

To be fair, there are a few positives now and again. Hardy is always a delight to watch, even if he kind of fumbles around in this one. For such an intense and serious performer, it is nice to see him having fun. To his credit, he doesn’t phone it in.

While the Ifans character and his family are unnecessary additions to the story, the actor is quite funny and his character is the source of some solid laughs.

Finally, the final battle at Area 51 where the bad creatures fight the military and the symbiotes, who jump in and out of people at random is good fun. The scene is too short and not as inventive as it should be, but it gives off a fun Creature Feature B-movie vibe. 

To quote Neil Simon, “Six days does not a week make” and three positives cannot carry such a messy film. The overly-serious theme (that comes and goes) elicits zero emotion, most of the action can’t achieve the required “punch”, and some of the best British character actors working today are wasted in roles written beneath their talents.

With such talent involved, it is a shame that Venom: The Last Dance fails so badly. This is a film that is occasionally so painful to watch that I almost feel sorry for it. Almost.

Venom: The Last Dance

Written by Tom Hardy and Kelly Marcel

Directed by Kelly Marcel

Starring Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clark Backo, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham

PG-13, 109 Minutes, Columbia Pictures, Marvel, Arad Productions