“Venom: The Last Dance” Sinks Trilogy
Written by: Adam Vaughn | October 24th, 2024
Venom: The Last Dance (Kelly Marcel, 2024) 1 out of 5 stars
Sad to say that, after a mixed-up-yet-entertaining run, the “Venom” trilogy comes to a close by smashing all its last thoughts into a jumbled, messy conclusion. Venom: The Last Dance picks up with Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy, The Bikeriders) and Venom on the run, living as fugitives in Mexico while fighting crime as the “Lethal Protector.” That all changes (quite drastically) when a menacing creature called a “Xenophage” descends from space and attacks Venom/Eddie. Eddie is shocked, but Venom knows the truth: his home world has found him, and the all-powerful being known as Knull (Andy Serkis, The Batman) is after them. Running from cunning military forces on earth, and seemingly unstoppable creatures from space, Eddie and Venom must make a difficult decision as to whether their friendship is worth sacrificing for the fate of all mankind.
An existing element of this film that I would like to commend would be director Kelly Marcel’s continuance of the dynamic between Eddie and Venom. While I will always wonder what the trilogy would have looked like had it chosen to take the dark elements of Venom even further, I do appreciate that Marcel’s writing for the trilogy has given the viewers a likable relationship between human and symbiote. While it may not be so narratively sound, it certainly leads to many crowd-pleasing instances of one-liner comedy.
Beyond the endearing relationship between the two heroes, however, Venom: The Last Dance barely even attempts to create a compelling, satisfying addition to the franchise, but simply phones it in with lazy writing, undeveloped characters, and sequences that hardly make sense at times. The main villain can hardly be Knull, for as menacing as he looks, he barely makes an appearance in the film, and no showdown between Venom and Knull ever occurs. Inversely, Marcel splashes us with symbiotes throughout the film to sometimes dizzying effect, and despite an ensemble of talented actors, very little that is seen across the screen manages to fully draw the viewer in.
While Venom: The Last Dance sadly does not break any new filmmaking ground through its execution, one will nevertheless find a base level of entertainment. A few tears are jerked at the way the story wraps things up, and all the while it becomes very clear that the creators simply wanted to let things come to rest in no particular fashion or cinematic style. As the name of the film suggests, this is truly the last bit of dancing we’ll be seeing Venom do for a while.