REVIEW: Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

Movie Reviews

In anticipation of reviewing Venom: The Last Dance, I finally watched the first two films in the series over the last couple of days. So, I’ll certainly say The Last Dance is the best of the three, but that’s partly because the first two are awful (especially Let There Be Carnage; talk about a crime scene of a movie). It retains some of the problems of its predecessors: painfully unfunny humor (that doesn’t befit the character), a rushed pace that drops some important character and story beats too quickly, and poorly filmed action scenes to mask the bad special effects. But it’s got one thing the first two lack: some genuine humanity.

Upon returning from the MCU after a replay of the post-credits scene from Spider-Man: No Way Home, Eddie Brock finds himself wanted for Detective Patrick Mulligan’s murder. As he makes his way to New York (to reclaim his old home and show Venom the Statue of Liberty), a monstrous alien creature attacks him, which Venom says is a sign that an ancient cosmic evil is hunting them. Meanwhile, a military program that’s been collecting and studying the symbiotes is also looking for Venom.

The big talk surrounding Venom: The Last Dance is about Knull, the God of the Symbiotes whose much-ballyhooed appearance stoked the interest of comic fans. And this movie indeed acts as both a wrap-up for the Venom trilogy and an introduction to Knull, just as writer-director Kelly Marcel said it would. Knull appears almost immediately, accompanied by a rundown of his backstory, and they got his look down pat. Knull looks perfect, like he was ripped out of the comics, and while he’s only in a couple of quick scenes this time, he’s being set up as a major threat down the line. (Think Blofeld in the early James Bond films.) Immediately, the stakes are raised from a couple of alien goop monsters punching each other through walls to a massively powerful conqueror looking to destroy every world in the universe.

Knull’s introduction is cool, but it also illustrates one of the major problems with Venom: The Last Dance – it lacks a central villain. Knull is nominally the antagonist, but he’s so far in the background that he doesn’t register as a nemesis for Venom. Venom has to face his monstrous henchmen, called Xenophages, but they’re just beasts hunting him like dogs let off their leashes. What the film needed was a sort of field commander with a personality, maybe a leftover symbiote loyal to Knull, who could serve as a personal nemesis for Venom. To stretch the James Bond analogy, he would be like Dr. No, Rosa Klebb, or Emilio Largo, high-ranking SPECTRE agents put in charge of various operations while Blofeld waited in the shadows. Riot and Carnage sucked (in the movies, I mean), but at least Venom had an adversary.

However, Venom: The Last Dance is somewhat buoyed by some of its supporting cast. They’re not spectacular, and some of them needed a few more scenes to really jump off the screen, but they surprisingly have good motivations for doing whatever it is they do. For example, the great Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Rex Strickland, the head of the military outfit searching for Venom. This could have been a stock movie “evil Army guy” character, and in certain ways, he is, but as the film goes along, he develops relatable motivations for hating Venom beyond being a ruthless soldier. Juno Temple plays Dr. Teddy Payne, the head scientist for the government program collecting the symbiotes. Her motivations are kind of basic, but she presents a point of view that rivals Strickland’s, and it becomes fascinating when the tables turn, and she starts to make him look more reasonable than she is. Best of all is Rhys Ifans, who plays… well, I don’t want to ruin it. It’s not a spoiler, really, but it initially seems like it comes completely out of left field; however, this subplot comes full circle, and I was impressed with how well this all played out (again, because the first two Venom movies were terrible).

It’s still not great, though. Outside of the Rhys Ifans plotline, I wish these characters were explored a bit more and given some room to breathe so we could really get a sense of these people. But Venom: The Last Dance moves as quickly as it can, speeding through character interactions and some scenes that would have fleshed out the plot and given a better sense of the danger Eddie Brock was in. This extends to the action scenes, which are mostly as poorly filmed as the ones in Venom and Let There Be Carnage. For example, that scene in all the trailers where Venom fights one of the Xenophages on an airplane is over before it begins, and any time the symbiotes throw down, you can barely tell who’s doing what to whom. I suspect this is to mask the lousy special effects, which I understand to an extent (although the effects are slightly better in this one – slightly), but it sacrifices the action scenes, which are essential in movies as dumb as these are.

And despite its decent characterizations, Venom: The Last Dance is dumb as a post in some places. I don’t know why the people behind these movies decided that Venom is an idiot – probably because they think it’s funny – but good God, they’ve taken all the mystique out of what, on the page, is a very cool and intimidating character. Venom does here what he did in the previous two films, making bad jokes and looking at the world in childlike wonder. But he acts stupid, too; he establishes a rule for operating while Knull’s forces are hunting him and Eddie, then breaks that rule and puts them in danger for the most idiotic reason you can imagine because the film wants to move the plot forward but can’t think of a smart way to do it. And the mid-credits scene completely nullifies the entire movie, rendering major character decisions and essential plot points meaningless with no explanation behind it. Eddie Brock isn’t a whole lot better, constantly trying to be funny and failing miserably, with cringeworthy jokes rattled off under his breath when he could just be quiet and let a scene play out. (As much as I generally love Tom Hardy, he’s awful in these movies.) There’s too much humor and ironic detachment in general, especially when you’ve got the nigh-unkillable forces of a cosmic demon god trying to destroy your planet. It’s hard to make a threat seem scary when the hero thinks he’s above it for no reason except that’s what the kids like nowadays. (And, really, do they?)

Venom: The Last Dance isn’t a particularly good movie, and it drops the ball on the few things it does occasionally get right. But it’s a step up from Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and while I won’t go so far as to say this series ends on a high note, it certainly could have been worse.

Let us know what you thought of Venom: The Last Dance in the comments!

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