The budget alien Spider-Man stands in between the human race and a faceless evil man on another planet in what seems to be the final installment of Venom, titled Venom 3: The Last Dance. However, inside the MCU, is anything really final? No, it’s not, thanks to alternate timelines and multi-versus which Venom 3 makes fun of early on here in Part 3, which is one of its best jokes. But with the amount of emotional setup that’s on display for Tom Hardy and his titular character, Venom 3: The Last Dance pukes all over itself before the party really starts and never has the epic sendoff it allegedly deserves. Needless to say, all of the Venom will be sucked out of this big black symbiote once and for all after the credits roll.
It’s difficult to still understand how Sony Pictures greenlights movies like this to be made. Sure, with the previous two Venom installments making $1.4 billion at the box office despite some unfavorable reviews allows Sony to make more films, however, the trajectory of this Venom trilogy is a steep roller coaster of something posing as a serious superhero addition to a hilarious action-comedy with Woody Harrelson. The third film tries for both but never makes it past first base with the intent to score all the way. The first Venom movie was directed by Reuben Fleischer (Zombieland). The second installment was made by Andy Serkis who took directing courses from Peter Jackson during The Hobbit Trilogy where he was an assistant director. Both of these movies were beautifully made, visually speaking but the dialogue and other script work had a ton of factory defects. Sony’s answer to these problems was to hire a woman who had never directed before but had written the screenplay for 50 Shades of Grey (Kelly Marcel). “That’s a bold choice, Cotton. Let’s see how that will work out?” It doesn’t work out whatsoever in its conclusion or any of the action beats.
Venom 3: The Last Dance starts off well enough when the 2nd film leaves off on the tropical beach where Brock (Tom Hardy) and his alter ego Venom were last seen. After a quick Tom Cruise impression from the movie Cocktail and a mention of the events of Avengers Endgame, Venom, and Brock cross paths with a few idiotic gang members who are keeping dogs locked up. This is not exactly a save-the-world scenario, but neither is this Venom franchise. From here, it’s shown that a vampire-looking white guy on another planet has a ton of evil alien monsters who he sends to Earth to find an amulet of sorts that is hidden inside the body of Venom and Brock that would free this evil and destroy the universe. The catch is that these aliens are almost like a T.Rex, they can’t see anything unless Brock and Venom are in their full superhero form, and one of them has to die for the amulet inside themselves to be destroyed.
From this point, Venom 3 is a road trip comedy from Mexico to New York with one long stop over outside of Las Vegas where the main showdown takes place at Area 51 which houses a bunch of rainbow-colored symbiotes. Meanwhile, Venom is hitchhiking with a hippie family that is obsessed with alien life forms in this ironic twist as Venom tries to etch in Brock’s brain that this alien threat is very serious and that they may not survive the outcome. So the writer-director Kelly Marcel showcases characters from the past two films for a few seconds only to make slight appearances for an audience wave and nod, but never to advance any storyline or plot, including Venom in full character dancing to ABBA’s Dancing Queen in the penthouse suite in Vegas with the fan-favorite character Ms. Chen. None of it works for longer than a few seconds, then it’s off to the next debacle that leads into the worst anti-climactic fight scene in the history of the MCU. It’s as if a fourth grader staged this fight scene with no rhyme or rhythm and let it play out for a couple of minutes only to have every character they built up be destroyed within seconds. A whole host of multi-colored symbiotes find human hosts to take out these alien monsters at Area 51 only to serve no purpose after each of them is killed immediately. It was clear that Kelly Marcel knew nothing about how to stage an action sequence, let alone showcase the true powers of Venom with the exception of turning him into any kind of wild amphibian or horse.
It’s all rote from the very beginning, however, Tom Hardy clearly loves the character and wants to have a great sendoff for him. It’s just sad, unfortunate, but rather hilarious that Sony allowed for this seemingly emotional end to be covered in icky, black goo that derails every heartfelt beat where Venom and Brock are trying to bond closer and accept the reality of their situation. Who gives a frog’s fat ass if Venom can turn into a symbiote fish or if a symbiote woman is the future of the franchise? Nobody does. Just deliver a heart-rendering story between Brock and Venom with some stunning action sequences with the $120 million budget. None of that came true here. Even the end and post-credit sequences are exceptionally stale. What a waste of a trilogy that could have been memorable. Wait, Woody Harrelson was god-tier amazing, so there’s that. Skip this big, black symbiote nonsense and go see Terrifier 3 instead and celebrate Christmas the way Art the Clown would want everyone to.