RATING: 5.5/10
Occasionally, movie trilogies save the best for last.
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, Toy Story 3 and The Bourne Ultimatum each concluded on a giddy high… until greed demanded the franchises overextend with disappointing additional instalments including a fifth hoorah for Woody and Buzz earmarked for summer 2026.
The third and supposedly final chapter of the Venom saga set in the same Marvel Comics universe as Tom Holland’s friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man is (marginally) the best of the special effects-laden bunch and marks the feature directorial debut of screenwriter Kelly Marcel.
A ramshackle plot formally introduces a new Thanos-level supervillain to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to sever the bond between Tom Hardy’s reluctant hero and his symbiote partner-in-crime, whose antagonistic relationship has been an enduring highlight of the series.
The symbiote’s potty-mouthed inner dialogue is a reliable source of comic relief and Marcel elicits giggles from Venom’s attempts to make a cocktail, dole out rough justice to members of a dog-fighting ring or gamble for the first time in a crowded Las Vegas casino.
Superfluous to dramatic requirements, but fleeting fun nonetheless, Venom also gets to groove in a hotel penthouse with convenience store owner Mrs Chen (Peggy Lu).
Laughs are shoe-horned into the scattershot narrative framework of a road trip down the Extraterrestrial Highway towards Area 51 in the company of a UFO obsessive (Rhys Ifans) and his campervan clan.
When we first re-encounter investigative journalist Eddie Brock (Hardy) and Venom, they are lying low in Mexico City, on the run from authorities for the murder of detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham).
The cop and his bonded symbiote Toxin are alive, under the observation of Dr Payne (Juno Temple) at the Imperium symbiote containment programme located 100 feet beneath the subsurface of the highly classified Area 51 US Air Force facility in the Nevada desert.
Puny humans are blissfully unaware that the symbiotes’ immortal creator, god of darkness Knull (Andy Serkis), has dispatched xenophage hunters to locate Venom’s hidden power source, the Codex, which can set Knull free to terrorise the multiverse.
Military commander Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) learns of the cataclysmic threat and vows to kill Eddie, thereby destroying the Codex.
Venom: The Last Dance is an unapologetically noisy swansong, replete with two additional scenes secreted in the end credits.
The xenophage hunters are strikingly similar to HR Giger’s Alien queens, albeit with rotating rows of razor-sharp teeth that shred victims and expel chopped remains out the back of the creatures’ heads like a woodchipper.
Hardy is a beleaguered, sweaty mess for most of the film until he’s called upon to be a willing accomplice to Marcel’s script as it gently plucks heartstrings.
Teary eyes almost feel deserved with a sombre final sway.
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