Venom: The Last Dance (2024) Review: A Futile Third Venom Movie That Fails to Give Tom Hardy’s Character a Proper Send-Off

The first two Venom movies were victims of missed opportunities but it’s hard to deny the sheer commitment that Tom Hardy gave his all in his unhinged dual performance playing Eddie Brock and Venom. Now, with Hardy himself reportedly portraying the iconic character for one last time in Venom: The Last Dance, the biggest question lies in whether the SSU (Sony’s Spider-Man Universe) will finally get it right by course-correcting the franchise to cap off the trilogy with a bang?

Well, under the direction of Kelly Marcel, the co-writer of the first two movies, who was calling the shots for the first time, I couldn’t believe Venom: The Last Dance fares even worse than I thought. Marcel, who also wrote the screenplay with Hardy receiving a co-story credit, botches the potential of giving the lead actor himself an epic send-off. The story looks like it’s getting somewhere, promising something big with the introduction of Knull, the deity from a planet called Klyntar responsible for creating the symbiotes. He sent in an army of Xenophage, the alien species of symbiotes hunters through the portals to track down Venom on Earth.

Meanwhile, Eddie Brock/Venom has become a fugitive following the events of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, where he lay low in Mexico but not for long. Not only does the Xenophage arrive to hunt him down but Eddie/Venom also faces a troop led by Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), whose order is to capture Venom for Dr Payne’s (Juno Temple) lab experiment on the symbiotes. She has been researching her test subject already contained in the underground facility: Mulligan (Stephen Graham), previously a police detective from the second movie who was supposed to die amid a church battle between Venom, Carnage (Woody Harrelson) and Frances (Naomie Harris).

Between the cross-country pursuit and Dr Payne’s ongoing symbiote research, Marcel tries to fill in the rest of the blanks with an added Thelma & Louise-like road-movie genre. This is especially true with new side characters, a family of four led by Martin (Rhys Ifans) who drives an old beat-up van en route to Area 51.

The thing about casting Rhys Ifans made me wonder why portray him in a different character when he already played Curt Connors/Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man: No Way Home. The movie could have cast a different actor to play Martin instead to avoid confusion unless Venom: The Last Dance is meant to erase the past (i.e. what you have seen Ifans played a crucial role in SSU no longer matters anymore).

But it doesn’t look that way, resulting in an oversight and a big mistake after Marcel went on the record stating “It’s not uncommon for actors to be cast as different Marvel characters across various films and this is no different“. The introduction of Martin and his family midway through the movie feels more like they are shoehorned into the story for the sake of humanising Eddie/Venom after they cross paths at some point.

I can’t help but feel the whole journey of Eddie/Venom interacting with Martin and his family is an unnecessary filler in the already padded-out narrative, even though Venom: The Last Dance only runs around a standard two-hour length. Omitting Martin and his family completely from the story would have helped streamline the movie.

The same also goes with the return of Peggy Lu reprising her role as Mrs Chen, where she stumbles upon Eddie/Venom in a Las Vegas casino, leading to a subsequent song-and-dance sequence in the hotel suite scored to A*Teens’ “Dancing Queen”. Earlier, there’s even a scene where Martin wants everyone in the van to sing a long David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” while he’s playing a guitar. It’s not like the past Venom movies weren’t guilty of fillers-heavy moments but given the so-called “witness the epic conclusion” tagline that was supposed to end the Tom Hardy-era of Eddie/Venom character, Marcel seems to be more interested in stalling the momentum and going around the circle.

For a movie revolving around Eddie/Venom on the run, I was expecting higher stakes in Venom: The Last Dance. Sure, there are moments of Xenophage/Rex Strickland’s pursuit against Eddie/Venom — the plane scene, the river chase and yet, the action set pieces could only muster some half-baked excitement. And that bizarre Venom-horse which prominently featured in the trailers? I admit it was a guilty-pleasure fun watching it again on IMAX but a scene like this is pretty much few and far between.

By the time the movie culminates in a typical CG-heavy finale battling against the Xenophage, I have lost interest in Venom: The Last Dance. What should have been action scenes evoking palpable tension with both dramatic and emotional stakes, end up disappointingly hollow.

Try as hard as Hardy may in Venom: The Last Dance, his usual go-for-broke performance doesn’t resonate much this time around. Marcel’s overall attempt to give room for other supporting actors to shine, namely Juno Temple’s Dr Payne’s minor backstory surrounding her sad childhood past is nothing more than a perfunctory addition that doesn’t help much to make me feel invested in her character. Unlike the first two movies, the third instalment lacks the much-needed storytelling hook to justify its existence even with the movie teasing Knull’s appearance barely registers.

Venom: The Last Dance has two post-credits scenes: one in the middle and the other after the credits ends. With one more SSU movie to go for this year — the long-delayed Kraven the Hunter currently set for a December release, which I don’t have any expectations so far, the future for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe continues to look bleak, especially after the creative and financial disappointments of Morbius and Madame Web. Except for Deadpool & Wolverine, the quality of comic-book movies have significantly declined in 2024 and the same unfortunately goes for Venom: The Last Dance, easily the worst Venom movie in the trilogy.