Too safe and scared to be as fun as it could be

Key Takeaways

Venom: The Last Dances finds Eddie and Venom on the run from both human agencies and alien forces.
The film struggles with too much world-building and one-note supporting characters, leading to a familiar finale.
Despite some potential, the movie falls short of being bold and definitive, catering too much to superhero movie norms and future stories.

Just as an alien parasite might struggle with a human over control of a host body, there are two forces that battle in making the final chapter of the Venom trilogy, resulting in a story that’s can’t quite keep a consistent tone, pace, or theme. While there are a bunch of moments that point to what a better film would look like, the inability of Venom: The Last Dance to reconcile the desire of the filmmakers with the needs of a major studio keeps the story muddled and the excitement tempered.

Venom: The Last Dance follows journalist Eddie Brock and his alien symbiote Venomin the immediate aftermath of the events of the last movie, now on the run from the police after being accused of the murder of police officer Patrick Mulligan. It’s a government agency that studies symbiotes that’s really after Brock and Venom. A symbiote-killing alien, under the direction of a new Marvel big baddie, is also trying to hunt down the pair. It adds up to a road trip buddy movie that’s fun when it slows down and gets very tedious when it has to deal with exposition and focus on any characters that aren’t Eddie and Venom.

They are the heart of these silly movies that have rightfully tried to focus on the bickering nature and goofy antics of unlikely friends. The introduction of a new villain that’s only in the film to get audiences piqued for future stories, as well as characters that can be summed up as Generic Scientist and Generic Military Leader, prevent The Last Dance from being the breezy, pondering story it desperately wants to be.

Pros

Eddie & Venom on a road trip
Funny, silly, and almost sentimental
Under two hours

Cons

Too much world-building
One-note supporting characters
Familiar finale

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Release date, rating, and runtime

Venom: The Last Dance opens in theaters October 25. It’s available in a bunch of different formats, such as 3D, 4DX, IMAX, and IMAX 3D. I think standard is more than worthy. Like the other entries in the series, it clocks in at under two hours, with a runtime of 1 hour and 50 minutes. It is rated PG-13 and includes a few heads getting eaten and one funny F-bomb.

Venom: The Last Dance

Director: Kelly Marcel
Writers: Kelly Marcel , Tom Hardy
Release Date: October 25, 2024
Cast: Tom Hardy , Peggy Lu , Stephen Graham , Cristo Fernández , Juno Temple , Alanna Ubach , Rhys Ifans , Chiwetel Ejiofor
Studio(s): Columbia Pictures , Marvel Entertainment , Pascal Pictures
prequel(s): Venom , Venom: Let There Be Carnage
Franchise(s): Spider-Man , Venom
Character(s): Eddie Brock / Venom , Mrs. Chen , Patrick Mulligan , Bartender

What I liked about Venom: The Last Dance

Eddie and Venom are a fun pair to watch

Marvel

There’s a lot of promise and potential in a film that positions Eddie and Venom on the run, making their way from Mexico into the Nevada desert en route to New York without any money, clean clothes, or a reliable pair of footwear. A moment early in the movie when the two come across a group of baddies and some dogs in need points to what a fun, more daring story could be: Eddie and Venom going from town to town rounding up bad guys and helping people in need. The two would make for a great pair serving up justice, old-west style.

As the two wander the desert, evading heavily-armed government agents and an alien that blends the giant cockroach from Men in Black with the power of a woodchipper, there are more moments of breeziness and curious contemplation. Venom is reckless and impulsive, while Eddie’s body and brain have to pay for those actions in the form of exhaustion and headaches. The two are friends, very much understanding of the other even if their catchphrase needs some practice. This goofy bro-mance is the draw of the film; there’s a pathos to Hardy’s character that creeps into the film, as he wonders what life could have been like; he doesn’t so much regret meeting Venom as he thinks about what the two could do together if they weren’t on the run, if they could just disappear, and messily make food and drinks in cozy place by the beach.

A tender, almost bizarre second act follows a first that spends too much time setting up the stakes for this film. It’s a welcome reprieve, as Eddie and Venom encounter a hippie family in a minivan making their way to Area 51 to see some aliens. These characters are initially played up as jokes, but there is a sincerity present in the group (Rhys Ifans plays the patriarch), and a weird, genuine connection is made with Eddie. I think these scenes could be read as silly mockery, but the camera lingers long on all their faces, and these moments have a lot more time and space given to them than, say, any of the banal exposition of the first act.

Those scenes represent again what a bolder Venom could be, as do the scenes when the pair finally arrive in Vegas and Venom discovers gambling. When an ABBA dance party unfolds in a penthouse atop the strip, The Last Dance demonstrates again what silly fun can be had; it’s over too soon as evil forces (both the monstrous alien and the obligatory action-packed third act) call for an end to the fun.

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What I didn’t like about Venom: The Last Dance

The superhero movie checklist can’t be ignored

Scene from Venom: The Last Dance of Venom in water

Sony

All those moments of levity and easy enjoyment can’t be the whole movie, unfortunately. They should be, but they wouldn’t serve the Marvel machine, even if this machine is the more desperate Sony Spider-verse one than the Disney Marvel juggernaut. I so desperately wish a movie could be so daring as to do away with MacGuffins, comic book exposition, and the promise of more stories beyond. Let a film be weird, and let it be final.

The very first scene sets a somber, frustrating tone, as audiences are given a monologue by a new villain named Knull who has been trapped in a prison by symbiotes, and sends forth some monstrous minions to free him. It’s learned that he needs a codex to break free of his chains, and that codex is held within Venom and Eddie. His minion can track the codex, but only when Venom is in his full form, which is an absurd asterisk added to the plot that the filmmakers seem bogged down by and return to whenever the plot needs to move along. While this is going on, the film spends too much time early on trying to get us to care about an optimistic scientist, Dr Payne (Juno Temple) who treats symbiotes with respect, and a military brass, Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who doesn’t. They work at a secret underground lab near Area 51, a site that’s days away from being decommissioned. There’s a quick backstory given to Payne that’s supposed to be tragic but comes across as darkly funny.

Everyone eventually converges in predictable fashion. Eddie and Venom are taken to the site while their newfound hippie friends stumble upon it looking for aliens. The evil alien finds its way there as well, while the supporting characters bicker about what’s the true threat to humanity. A third act is filled with tentacles, explosions, colorful symbiotes, and monsters that are really hard to kill. It could be more chaotic and drawn out than it is, so it’s not the most exhausting finale, but it is completely familiar. And with so much other weird potential, I’m left wishing Eddie and Venom took another detour to live life at a simpler, slower pace.

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Verdict: Should you see Venom: The Last Dance?

Wait to enjoy this conflicted lark at home

Scene from Venom:The Last Dance with Venom on the outside of a plane

Sony

Venom: The Last Dance has more in common with the first film, which had to do a lot of heavy lifting, than it does the more entertaining and curious second entry. I think it’s worth a watch, but maybe not worth a trip to the theaters. The struggle within the film is real. Director Kelly Marcel, who has worked with Hardy on others films and every one of the Venom movies, very much seems to want to explore the curious relationship between Eddie and Venom, and those scenes where it’s addressed are the best parts of the movie. It just gets completely undermined by all the studio needs, including, and this should come as no surprise, the many hints that this is not, in fact, the last of anything.