If there’s one thing Sony’s Venom franchise has never lacked, it’s audacity. From the moment Tom Hardy first donned the black symbiote, the series has been a carnival of absurdity, a head-spinning mix of brooding heroism, oddball humor, and out-of-place spectacle. The third, and purportedly final installment, Venom 3: The Last Dance, should have been the moment for a grand sendoff. Instead, it’s a misstep so dramatic it could be a cautionary tale in a filmmaking class about hubris, poor direction, and unearned sentimentality. Where do we begin? Perhaps by acknowledging the inherent paradox of the Venom series itself: a tongue-in-cheek action-comedy masquerading as a serious superhero tale. And for a time, the schlocky appeal of its oddball dynamic between Eddie Brock (Hardy) and his parasitic alter-ego, Venom, was undeniably entertaining. But in this final chapter, it seems the franchise’s self-awareness has reached its breaking point—and then collapsed into the gooey mess of incoherence.
Under the direction of Kelly Marcel, who penned the screenplays for the first two films but steps behind the camera for the first time here, the movie attempts to strike a tonal balance that it simply cannot sustain. Gone is the visual wit of Ruben Fleischer’s Venom (2018) and Andy Serkis’s vision in Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021). Marcel’s Last Dance feels like an overstretched parody of both, a film unsure of whether it wants to be a heartfelt goodbye to its tragic hero or a chaotic comedy of errors. Unfortunately, it fails at both. The film opens with a hazy reflection on the tropical beach where Brock and Venom were left at the close of the previous film. A breezy moment, fleetingly charming, soon veers into self-parody as Brock tries to lead a normal life while battling his alien conscience. There’s a gag about the film Cocktail and a passing reference to Avengers: Endgame that hints at the film’s meta-awareness, which, for a brief second, feels like it might be fun. But the joke, like the entire film, quickly dissipates, much like Venom’s antics as he turns into every creature imaginable except a credible hero.
Soon, our mismatched duo finds themselves pursued by a vampire-like alien who seeks an ancient amulet that’s hidden within Venom. This amulet, naturally, could unravel the universe. The plot, or lack thereof, becomes a road-trip comedy as Brock and Venom, along with an absurdly idealistic hippie family, take a detour through Las Vegas before finding themselves in a laughably underwhelming Area 51 showdown, where Venom dances to ABBA’s Dancing Queen—yes, you read that correctly. In this moment, Venom 3 falls flat on its face. The seemingly irreverent, “fan service” appearance of Ms. Chen (a grinning Peggy Lu) and random callbacks to earlier films can’t mask the deeper issue: there’s no narrative momentum. No stakes. No payoff. It’s as if Marcel were actively sabotaging the pathos Hardy so desperately tries to infuse into his character.
The action sequences are a muddled disaster. One might imagine that, with a $120 million budget, Sony would find a way to deliver on the promise of Venom’s supposed powers, but no. Instead, we get symbiotes morphing into lame, cartoonish animals, and a climax that can only be described as… well, anticlimactic. There’s nothing thrilling about the final confrontation, just a haze of colorless CGI and flailing bodies. Even the multi-colored symbiotes (which seem to be the film’s misguided attempt at a visual spectacle) serve no purpose, existing solely to be dispatched in a series of throwaway moments. Tom Hardy, to his credit, clearly loves this role; he’s in every scene, trying his hardest to infuse some depth into Brock’s eternal conflict with his alien counterpart. Unfortunately, Hardy’s raw energy is absorbed into a script that lacks the self-awareness it craves, undermining his every attempt at a poignant moment. The film’s so-called “emotional core” is drowned in cheap, cloying melodrama, splattered across the screen like so much black goo. The supposed “final dance” of Venom and Brock’s arc is less an elegy than a soggy, overstuffed anticlimax.
The final insult comes in the form of a post-credit sequence that is so laughably uninspired, it might as well be a parody of post-credit sequences. It offers neither closure nor excitement, simply a cynical nod toward whatever is next in the endless, insatiable MCU universe. But as the film itself recognizes, in a half-hearted joke about multiverses, Venom 3 will not be the last word in this story; or any story. It’s a shame that this trilogy, with all its potential for madness and mayhem, ends on such a hollow, viscous note. If there is any justice, Venom 3 will quickly be forgotten, relegated to the bargain bin of superhero cinema, a franchise that never quite figured out whether it wanted to be a tragic tale of heroism or a farce. And in that, perhaps, there’s a lesson about ambition without purpose. Meanwhile, I’ll take my chances on Terrifier 3 this holiday season. At least Art the Clown knows how to leave an impression.