Venom: The Last Dance

Was it too much to ask for a trilogy-capper that at least matched the low-quality but high entertainment value of the first two Venom films?

The final installment in Tom Hardy’s run as Marvel’s Lethal Protector, Venom: The Last Dance follows Eddie Brock and his titular symbiote pal as they’re hunted by a terrifying Xenophage creature sent to do the bidding of Knull, an ancient evil responsible for creating the symbiote race. Wanting to tear the Codex out of Venom so that he can free himself from his cosmic prison and reconquer the rest of the universe, Knull is only a single facet of the shitty situation Eddie finds himself in, as not long after his return from the MCU’s Earth-616, Eddie is wrongfully identified as the prime suspect for the death of Patrick Mulligan, a character introduced in the Venom: Let There Be Carnage. On the run and dodging danger from both sides, Eddie must find a way to clear his name while his better half does his best not to succumb to the insidious influence of Knull, the King in Black.

Coming off the heels of Madam Web, a movie so bad it almost came around the other side as good, Venom: The Last Dance is a disappointing sequel that seems to have only gotten a green light so that everyone’s contractual obligations could be satisfied before Sony sunsets their failed Spider-Man film universe. Serving next to no purpose as a film yet still trying to set up a new foe in Knull who reeks of studio desperation, The Last Dance’s illogical screenwriting lacks any cohesion or the appreciated dark humor and fun action beats from the previous two films, making this one a head-scratching failure that doesn’t have many saving graces.

Though not nearly as “good” as the last two films which were at least enjoyable on a B-movie level, The Last Dance does find a few moments where it successfully taps into the mediocrity of its predecessors. Pulling off a couple of cool action sequences and just barely making the random Las Vegas set piece in the middle of the film worthwhile, the positives of this movie are few and far between, with the bland villain, filler story, and general listlessness of this film as a whole ensuring that by the time the credits rolled, I couldn’t get out of my seat fast enough.

The only reason I went to see this movie was to close out a comic book trilogy that did enough good with the Venom character not to call them a complete waste of time, but after watching Venom: The Last Dance, I’m more annoyed by the entire ordeal than anything else. It’s up in the air whether or not Venom will make another live-action appearance either in the MCU or some other live-action universe but with the MCU’s upcoming Avengers: Secret Wars film promising a ridiculous amount of multiversal cameos, Venom: The Last Dance may not be the final time we see this symbiotic pair on the big screen after all.