Jonah Naplan   November 1, 2024

“Venom: The Last Dance” is a horrible comic book movie in the echo of other horrible comic book movies like “Fant4stic,” “Justice League,” and its cousin twice removed, “Madame Web.” And yet, it’s not bad in an enjoyable or funny way. More so in a manner that makes you want to constantly get up and leave the theater. It’s loud, and boring, and thematically empty, lacking what little charm already existed in the “Venom” franchise (all things considered, I was never a champion of this series in the first place—“Let There Be Carnage” was certainly my favorite, but I wouldn’t say that I “liked” it). There’s only so many one-liners that Tom Hardy can recycle as Eddie Brock, the forever bland and instantly forgettable protagonist, as he bickers back and forth with his salty-mouthed symbiote counterpart, Venom. And when this egregious film dares to tug at our heartstrings in the final section of its never-ending runtime, we’re so fed up that we yearn not to care in spite of the movie.

In this one, Eddie and Venom are fleeing from the grotesque vassals of Knull (voice of Andy Serkis), the villainous creature who created the symbiotes but who is so nondescript that he doesn’t even rear his head in the mortal world for the entirety of the movie, sequestered off to a distant (cheaply rendered) realm to bark commands in a low growl. Essentially, Knull is after an ancient key that only manifests when Eddie and Venom are paired together, and so they’re scouring the southwest with a piping hot tracker on their backs. Meanwhile, in an underground Area 51 lab, military leader Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and scientist Dr. Payne (Juno Temple) are conducting experiments on symbiote samples, deliberating whether to destroy or preserve the species for posterity. These are the least interesting sections of the movie and would seem obligatory in a blockbuster released in the early aughts. Any time these characters came on screen, I longed for more time with Eddie and Venom, an ironically desperate plea.

The pair’s escapade takes them through the desert, on a hitchhike with a family of hippies obsessed with alien life, and to Las Vegas, where Eddie/Venom is reunited with Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) in a bizarre, psychedelic-charged sequence that isn’t quirky nor charming. It all culminates in a murky and virtually indistinguishable final battle on the grounds of Area 51 with lots of dark creatures attacking other dark creatures and shredding and slicing and shouting. Most contemporary comic book movies have this sort of thing nowadays, and the best ones prove it’s not rational. “Venom: The Last Dance,” however, wallows around in the macho notoriety of the big crashes and bangs, offering little intellect or even anything of real entertainment value to the table.

By the time writer and director Kelly Marcel is whipping out a montage of the “greatest hits” collection from the other “Venom”s, we’re too exhausted and probably frustrated to really connect. This supposed franchise closer never earns our emotional endorsement of the characters but expects us to tear up as they find their endings. The film does not at all feel like a “final outing,” save for the manipulative final note which reads as a rushed and tacked-on closure.

Eddie Brock remains the bumbling unlikely hero who slurs his words and moves from scene to scene like someone who became a star by chance and is now riding drunkenly on his luck. “The Last Dance” doesn’t do much uplifting on his part, and he’s left as an awkward protagonist who’s a chore to follow. Unlike Deadpool or Tony Stark or Batman, there’s nothing charismatic or memorable about his character, and he probably never needed his own movie, let alone three. This film reasserts what I already thought to be true, stretching out a one-joke idea thinner than paper and neglecting to embark in any form of complexity in the way that a straight-to-video flick might.

It also looks cheap. At least other comic book movies from this year like “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Joker: Folie à Deux” have been visually competent, but “Venom: The Last Dance” is nearly incomprehensible amidst the sticky sludge that makes up its principal CG-subjects. And, like its franchise brethren, the whole thing is inexcusably dim, making it difficult to decipher which character is where and what they’re doing. By some point or another, “Venom: The Last Dance” incrementally becomes the nine-figure-budgeted equivalent of every little insufferable thing that film critics or art connoisseurs and “purists” complain about when it comes to comic book movies. It’s an amalgamation of the industry’s ugliest tendencies and worst thematic habits and is reprehensible even in trying to be mindless entertainment.

Don’t see this movie. Or, if you must, wait until it’s available at home. Doing so would honor the film’s true quality, which would otherwise go directly to streaming if it weren’t for the Marvel label. Instead, the movie gets valuable time in theaters, a sacred privilege it doesn’t deserve.

Now playing in theaters.