Film Review: VENOM: THE LAST DANCE: Third Go-Round is a Puddle of Ugly Goo

Venom: The Last Dance Film Review

Venom: The Last Dance (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by Kelly Marcel, written by Kelly Marcel and Tom Hardy, and starring Tom Hardy, Chiwetal Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, and Alanna Ubach.

It’s hard to believe we’ve come to this. Exploding onto Netflix this week, the third and (for now, anyway) final Venom movie is a strange anomaly in the annals of bad superhero movies, especially in the subcategory of Sony Picture’s odd Spider-Man-without-Spider-Man Universe of movies. On one hand, it’s undeniably terrible, silly, and utterly puerile as it flounders, like an exhausted comedian, desperate for a laugh or even a polite nod from its audience. On the other, it’s a fascinating example of a studio desperately clinging to what somewhat worked once, and running whatever goodwill it earned into the ground. The first Venom movie was no masterpiece, it wasn’t even a very good movie about the comic book character, but as weird little movie about a Spider-Man villain that went out of its way to avoid mentioning Spider-Man or his world in any meaningful way, it was watchable, silly, and most important of all, decent. Despite his Eddie Brock being played as essentially a well-meaning, even heroic reporter, and his Venom (the black goo alien that bonds with him) a cuddly, goofy bro, Tom Hardy felt like a good fit for the duo. Perhaps, like other movie series, after the first one whiffed and missed the point, Sony was bound to make a good movie eventually.

After the events of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eddie Brock and Venom are on the run again, framed for the murders committed by the hideous Carnage, played by none other than Woody Harrelson in a terrible wig. Hounded by soldiers commanded by Chiwetal Ejiofor’s General Rex Strickland, and wielding sonic guns (one of the Venom symbiote’s weaknesses), our lovable anti-heroes come under attack by a cosmic hunter called the Grendel, who needs Venom to free his master, the dark god, Knull, from his prison somewhere in outer space. It’s all very contrived and explained better in a comic book, and the movie can’t be bothered to give these elements the gravitas they deserve, so I won’t either. There’s a parallel story taking place in a military facility about the villainous general running a program to weaponize other symbiotes that are on earth for some reason, but again, the movie doesn’t care enough to do anything too interesting with them.

What it does care about, funnily enough, is wacky sequences like Brock playing slot machines in Vegas as his alien alter-ego screams about how much he loves the flashing colors spinning reels; pointless conversations with CGI monsters; a bafflingly stupid recurring gag where Brock keeps losing one of his shoes and replacing it with increasingly silly replacements; and, most pointless of all, an epic dance scene where Eddie morphs into his giant alien superhero form to, of all things, dance with another character to disco music.

There’s isn’t really much to say, really. I’m old enough that I can remember when the gold standard of superhero movies was Jim Carrey dancing around in Riddler pajamas, and how surprised I was when Fox actually made a really good X-Men movie, followed by Sony (ironically) making a truly wonderful Spider-Man movie. How we got to this point feels like a mystery, where Marvel has made an incredible cycle of movies with memorable characters, classic moments, and quotable lines that have in turn gone on to influence the comic book source material, while Sony is still out here, making junk that would have been at home with the likes of the lousy Nick Fury TV movie starring David Hasselhoff. At least it’s better than Morbius.

Rating: 2/10

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