Venom: The Last Dance has been billed as the end of Tom Hardy’s tenure as Eddie Brock, and the finale to set of films that are the best pure entertainment the superhero genre has had on offer in the last twenty years. But, of course, it ends on the suggestion that there could be another film. Maybe. If we’re very good. Or very chaotic, as Venom would undoubtedly prefer.
In all seriousness, there are two after-credits sequences. It’s not so much a goodbye as it is a tentative ‘tell us if you’re done and we’ll stop.’ And it’s hard not to love them for the unabashed giddiness of that move: Sure, they can quit. Of course they can. Any time they want to.
We all can. We don’t need this pathetic gremlin man and his monster buddy / bonded lifemate / live-in intrusive thoughts generator. That would be silly. Who needs another film of Tom Hardy shouting at himself in his very own Jekyll-and-Hyde romcom? While the rest of the superhero genre flails frantically over whether continuity hurts or helps, over how to handle yet another scandal, over who gets to be on top for the next decade and roll in cash, the Venom films have quietly done their thing to an enduring hum of enthusiasm that studios are seemingly keen to ignore because they can’t figure out the secret sauce that’s making it go.
I’d argue that some of the secret sauce is audiences being weirder than the world gives them credit for. I’d also argue that some of it is the fact that the Venom movies feel like a much older breed of superhero yarn.
The Last Dance picks up precisely where Let There Be Carnage and Spider-Man: No Way Home’s mid-credits sequence left off—Eddie (Tom Hardy) and Venom (Tom Hardy) sitting in a bar with Dani Rojas Cristo Fernández after multiverse-hopping against their will. (Venom hates the multiverse, by the way.) But their current problem is larger than any they’ve ever faced: The creator of the symbiotes, Knull (Andy Serkis), wants out of his prison, and has sent monsters to assure this mission’s success. How does he break out of prison? A codex. What’s that? A thing that Venom and Eddie create by being bonded together because Venom saved Eddie’s life in the first movie. The monsters can track them anytime they are fully Venom’d up. Oh, and the only way to destroy the codex is if one of them dies.
If that all sounds awfully convenient… I mean, what did you expect, these films are not here for intricate worldbuilding. They’re here for pathetic emotional drama and absurd alien rules and slapstick. Eddie and Venom need to hightail it away from the tracking monster(s) while Eddie nurses the worst hangover of his life. Venom wants to go to New York City, so that’s where they head… by symbiote-powered horse, and then on foot, because Eddie can’t help but do things the hardest way at any opportunity. He is sweating through every shirt and looks like hell, as per usual.
It turns out that folks other than the late tech mogul Carlton Drake are studying symbiotes on Earth, of course. One of those groups is a US scientific team called Imperium, located at the old Area 51 site—and yes, the decommissioning of said site (above-ground, anyway) is a fun little plot point in the film. Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) works there in honor of her long-dead brother, and is deeply fascinated with the aliens, to the chagrin of her military counterpart Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor). To be fair, every scientist working at Imperium is into the symbiotes, of which they have several (including the one that has bonded with Stephen Graham’s Patrick Mulligan somehow). Excessively so. You can probably guess where this is headed.
But first we have to get into some old school road trip shenanigans when Eddie and Venom run into a hippie family with a van who are trying to get dad Martin (Rhys Ifans) to Area 51 before it closes so he can see some aliens. They agree to drop Eddie off at Vegas if that will help him out—the flagrant ignorance of United States geography and how long it takes to drive between places is easily one of the most entertaining aspects of the film—a boon which the covert duo accepts. This leads to Eddie getting cleaned up for the first time in the entire series, an accidental rendezvous with Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) in a casino, and a lengthy (and ill-considered) ABBA dance break.
These movies know who they’re for, is all I’m saying.
All of these disparate pieces come together by the end, naturally, and the scientists get the chance to have some up close and personal time with the symbiotes they’ve been caring for all these years. And this might be one of my favorite aspects of the Venom films, the fact that science and scientists are never vilified—only military might and Silicon Valley tech posturing. So we get some fun action sequences where Venom thankfully doesn’t have to carry the weight… because if you’ve been paying attention, you remember that Venom is kind of a loser amongst his own kind and not very good at fighting bigger threats.
The Last Dance marks the first time that Venom writer and producer Kelly Marcel has stepped into the director’s role, and this film proves that she should definitely be given the job more often; Last Dance has some of the better action segments of the series, is beautifully paced, and knows when and how often to quiet down for a heartfelt talk or a few laughs. It’s also worth noting that the two main scientists of the film, Dr. Payne and Sadie Christmas (Clark Backo) are roles that would typically be filled by men in your average action movie cast. It’s almost as though having women in charge at multiple key levels of filmmaking results in having more women visible in film. (And that’s even without the presence of the protagonist’s former love interest, Anne Weying, who has better things to be doing at the moment.) Imagine that.
So the final (maybe) Venom film is every bit as fun as the last two. Though it does have a teary finale, so be prepared to have some feelings by the end. Whatever the result, we’ve been lucky to have such a odd array of movies dedicated to the Earth’s mightiest… uh, Lethal Protector.
