Venom: The Last Dance

Venom: The Last Dance concludes the maligned series with an actual scene of the titular character dancing. To Abba. For no reason. At a quite key part in the story. At a quite key part in the story where, it’s explained, that should Venom be in his full form he will be caught by some sort of indestructible killing machine hell bent on symbiote destruction.

And this is still not even the worst or most confusing part of the film, despite it being a truly cringe moment to maybe try and get some sort of traction on TikTok?

I won’t go into the fact that this film, with an already guaranteed audience, could have been anything. It could have led to a future Spider-Man project, put Eddie Brock somewhere within the MCU’s confines (like we last saw him – immediately retconned here of course) or just tried to be an interesting take on this great character.

You don’t need to read this to know it’s going to be a take-your-brain-out blurry mess of excruciating dialogue and woeful CGI but, like its predecessors, there is a little modicum of fun to be had.

Let’s start there: Tom Hardy’s charisma again carries you through the film and watching him is always a joy. He dons a tux at one point which looks like he’s gunning to be considered for Bond and you’ll be hoping he gets it.

He’s also surrounded by an absolutely packed supporting cast which is way more than the film deserves.

However, two of that supporting cast (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rhys Ifans) play at least C-grade MCU characters who are (maybe) still around and TBC for future projects so casting them here at best makes no sense and, at worst, is an absolute insult and slap in the face for Marvel fans who are trying to hold onto the fact that this ‘Sony-verse’ may at some point play a tangential part in some sort of wider future. At least that would justify its existence.

[From here on out I’m going to just casually drop spoilers left, right and centre. Please stop reading if you don’t want to ‘spoil’ the film but, frankly, it doesn’t really deserve it.]

Let’s chat about the villain. We get a little exposition from Knull in the opening (with the voice of Andy Serkis, no less) yet we don’t even see his face until the post-credits. Yes, you read that right.

No villain, the supposed reason for which is because Venom ‘sacrifices himself’ in order to keep him ‘trapped in some eternal void’, yet a post credits tease which suggests he may play a future part anyway? In a film series that’s supposedly ended? And after you’ve ‘killed off’ the title character? And no one thought to check this detail in production?

No one also checked the fact that, early on, Venom and the 'creature sent by Knull' have a fight on top of a passenger plane leaving a burning engine and screaming passengers inside. They jump off the plane to escape and we don’t then see it again. Who edited this thing?

Ejiofor’s military leader, whilst in a descending lift to ‘Area 55’, has a line of dialogue to Juno Temple’s scientist character about how the facility is ‘underground and impenetrable and secret’ (or some waffle) despite the fact that she has seemingly led the facility her entire career. The exposition and script is ‘bad superhero movie of the 2000’s 101’ at times.

I’m going to spoil the ending for you as well because it might be the most forehead-slappingly bad thing you’ve ever seen in a film. It’s worse than the Crystal Skull ‘fridge’ moment.

As Venom completes his ‘worthy sacrifice’ by killing himself and the chasing creatures (there’s more of them now) in some sort of ‘acid shower’ (because, why not) with Hardy’s Eddie lying mere feet away, he places a door over Eddie to ‘protect him from the acid’.

Inexplicably, what then happens is the entire facility blows up in some sort of nuclear acid explosion which destroys everything in its wake (other characters are shown barely escaping it and looking at it from afar). We’re led to believe this is the end of Venom and Eddie and sad it is too.

We then cut to Eddie lying on the ground and the camera pans up, seemingly showing him dead.

He then, I shit you not, wakes up in a hospital bed with nary a scratch and nary an explanation before he wondering the streets of New York brings the film to an end.

Seriously, who the hell edited this thing?!

And yet, despite how just straight up horrid looking they’ve made Venom and how unlikeable quite a lot of it is, there have been moments across the three movies to enjoy.

Sometimes there are flashes that they know what type of film this is and it can be enjoyed for that. There are a couple of jokes in this one that land. There is also a completely unnecessary but quite lovely scene of Eddie joining a family on a road trip and refusing to sing along to David Bowie that works in context and brings depth to the characters.

But there is also a relatively important character that gets so little effort put into them that they just get identified as ‘liking Christmas’ and this is their only character trait.

It sums up what easily goes down as one of the worst trilogies of movies ever made. Despite the cast, despite the concept and despite the character.

Sony need to stop making ‘superhero’ films and let’s hand Venom, Morbius, Madame Web et al across to the MCU proper and have someone slaughter them all in an ‘Illuminati-esque’ scene in a future film. That's something we can all get behind.

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