VENOM: THE LAST DANCE

While Venom: The Last Dance isn’t quite as loud and obnoxious as the previous two entries, the buddy movie dynamic fails to yield emotional dividends and the finale is nonsensically bland.

Why exactly Tom Hardy appears so enamoured with the odd bromance between reporter Eddie Brock and alien symbiote Venom will forever remain a mystery to me, and nothing in the final part of this franchise convinces me that there is more to it than a lazy cash-in on an established IP.

Picking up straight after the end credits scene of the second Venom film, The Last Dance shows Brock and the symbiote on the run from extra-terrestrial hunters in search of a key that will free Venom’s powerful creator from his prison. Along the way they contemplate how their bond has deepened throughout their adventures.

One of my biggest problems with Venom has always been how intense Hardy has played both sides of the character, which tonally is at odds with the silliness of the premise, and that problem is not solved in the Last Dance. On the contrary, an interlude with little green men afficionado Rhys Ifans and his family – the only truly entertaining part of the film – highlights how a little more levity in Hardy's performance would have worked wonders for the franchise.

But why correct course when the previous two instalments have grossed a combined 1.3 billion dollars at the box office, debut helmer Kelly Marcel – a longtime writer for the series – clearly thinks, so she provides more of the same, albeit in a less frenetic pace than the earlier entries.

So inevitably Venom: The Last Dance culminates in an incomprehensible, yawn-inducing CGI spectacle where the stakes are surprisingly low and the denouement contains not a grain of emotional heft. In short: if superhero fatigue is a thing, The Last Dance is unlikely to revive interest.

release: 2024

director: Kelly Marcel

starring: Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans