Venom: The Last Dance Takes a Lackluster Final Journey
Superhero movies are in a state of rebuilding. The old formulas aren’t working as well as they used to, and so the people behind them are either going back to square one or staging a hostile corporate restructure in an effort to recreate what worked before. The Marvel Cinematic Universe brought back Robert Downey Jr. to play one of their most iconic villains; DC is starting over from the beginning but still putting out TV shows from the previous swing; and then there’s one more: little Sony sitting in the corner eating Play-Doh and playing with its Dollar Tree knockoff Spider-Man toys.
Coming off the heels of 2023’s animated hit Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Sony had to come back strong with its live action Spider-Man adjacent movies. Their answer: a triple punch of Madame Web, Venom: The Last Dance, and Kraven the Hunter. Madame Web became a meme, Kraven the Hunter experienced three delays before landing on its December release date, and Venom: The Last Dance just rounds out this less-than-successful attempt at rejuvenating Sony’s Spider-Man franchise.
In Venom: The Last Dance, the third and final installment in the Venom trilogy, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his symbiote Venom are on the run after being blamed for the murder of Detective Pat Mulligan (Stephen Graham). Knull (Andy Serkis), the creator of the symbiote Venom was born from, wants some macguffin called “the codex” that sits in Eddie’s spine after Venom saved his life in the first movie. The plot is pretty generic compared to the big bombastic stories of the previous two movies, but works for this one’s road-trip setting.
The Venom trilogy has taken place over the course of a year, and Venom and Eddie have had a rough one: constantly fighting new symbiote threats, going through a pretty tough break-up with Eddie’s girlfriend, and trying to learn how to be friends instead of enemies. The exploration of their relationship throughout The Last Dance is a breath of fresh air after the slapstick comedy that the duo brought to the first two installments. It’s refreshing to watch them have contemplative moments where they question if any of what they’re doing matters. They’ve both been considered losers for so long until they came together and decided to be Earth’s “lethal protector.” The jokes are still there, but these few reflective scenes are what make an ultimately unsatisfying conclusion feel more grounded.
Where the movie gets lost is in the typical superhero movie trap: trying to service a larger franchise-wide story that has little to do with the plot at hand. Imperium-aligned Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) get caught in a storyline about the closure of Area 51 and the study of the symbiotes that have landed on Earth. There’s not a lot of room to explore the background of their characters aside from one scene showing the traumatic childhood event that led Dr. Payne to become a scientist. Ejiofor and Temple both try their best with what they’re given, but in the end it all feels futile. The same can be said for Rhys Ifans as a hippie alien truth seeker on a road trip with his family to see Area 51 before its closure. The script probably called for a lot less on the page, but these people were able to mine something out of it, which is something to be applauded.
Look, I don’t hate Venom: The Last Dance. I like Venom. I like Tom Hardy just doing a silly voice and trying to find the gravity in playing this character. But I probably wouldn’t be thinking about it all too much if it weren’t for having to write this review. It’s boring at times and overstays its welcome, but at least everyone is trying their best. They know these movies are caught up in studio politics over the rights to the Spider-Man character. They know the public sees these spin-off films for what they are (essentially cash grabs to keep the license). It’s admirable that Sony allowed franchise screenwriter Kelly Marcel to finally take a crack at directing the story she’s come to know so well. While it doesn’t all hit, she takes some fun swings by introducing ideas like Venom transforming into different animals and trying to get more into the relationship between him and Eddie.
But while we can applaud Sony for appointing first-time film directors to handle their tentpole blockbusters, at what point do we just cut the cord and call it a game? If this really is Venom’s last dance, then maybe it has a lot in common with this review: longer than it should be and not really worth the wait.
Blake Williams has a B.A. in Film and Television Production from Ball State University. He aspires to one day be a director, but until that day comes you can find him at a showing of whatever's playing that day or at home alphabetizing a shelf of movies and games and muttering about how he should "slow down on spending."