Believe it or not, I was one of the first people to defend the 2018 Venom film against the narrative that it was a horrible comic book movie.

I was correct that the first Venom was not bottom-of-the-barrel Marvel-related content.  I failed to understand that the movies that would proceed Venom proved far worse than anyone could have imagined.

 In 2018, Venom provided a welcome change to an overcrowded Superhero genre around the same time mainstream audiences were getting their kick from Marvel Avengers movies. Tom Hardy plays the character of Eddie Brock who is essentially a man possessed by an Intergalactic space demon that gives him superpowers while turning their Shenanigans into a Cheesy buddy cop film. Audiences received it well and the film became a major box office success grossing over 850 million worldwide.

As with any comic book movie that makes a little bit of money,  Sony decided to do a sequel entitled ‘ Venom Let There Be Carnage’ and that was the exact moment that all goodwill and grace that this franchise had to offer evaporated like a bottle of water spilled into the hot Arizona summer streets. 

Let There Be Carnage failed because the filmmakers had no idea about any of the characters. Sony took two of its most valuable properties and drove them into nothing more than one-note jokes. By the time Venom was partying with San Francisco hipsters or in the first 20 minutes of the film,  I was ready to walk out and call the film as one of the worst comic book movies I have ever seen.

However, the film was still somewhat successful even though it made 350 million dollars less than the previous film. Because the character of Venom is still loosely based around Sony’s Cash Cow Spider-Man,  the studio decided to end things on a low note bringing us to the final Venom movie ‘Venom: The Last Dance’.

Set after the events of Let There Be Carnage, Eddie Brock and Venom go on the run from both the law and a group of nasty interdimensional demonic beings led by the God of all symbiotes Knull. Eddie and Venom contain the key to unlock Knull from his interdimensional prison which would lead to the destruction of all worlds. 

Meanwhile, the deconstruction of Area 51 takes place, and the government has captured several symbiotes in the last-ditch attempt to study their origin and tap into their potential. Eddie and Venom are forced to make a devastating decision. For the world to be saved, one of them must die.

What is the fundamental difference between venom and the last dance in the film that came before it?  Let There Be Carnage was a film that was so mind-numbingly stupid, that I considered it an insult and mockery of people who enjoy comic books as Sony was banking on audiences seeing the film on name recognition that they would not care about the quality of the movie.

When it comes to the Last Dance, Sony certainly has the gimmick of claiming that this will be the final Venom movie of the franchise.  However, while the film is not insultingly stupid,  it is insultingly boring.  Venom the Last Dance is one of the most poorly structured movies of 2024.   We get an introduction to the movie’s villain in the opening scene. The character of Knull is the father of all symbiotes and wants revenge on those who sealed him away.

After this quick introduction, the film puts the audience into a series of scenes that have no symmetry with one another. It feels like you’re watching three separate movies that were cut into one another rather than one coherent film.

Picking up where they left off with the last film,  the dialogue of this movie is abysmal.  The buddy cop stick between Eddie and Venom has long worn out as welcome and as a result, the laughs between the two leads are few and far between.  The dialogue is rotten and there’s no weight to the story.  The tone of the A, B, and C plots do not mesh. The film inexplicably takes a detour to Las Vegas to show off a couple of establishing shots of fancy hotels while the Vegas connection ultimately leads to nothing.

The movie is structurally about a villain turned antihero among a mindless sea of scientists and military men, it’s difficult to point out who exactly is the good guy in this story. 

The scientists care nothing about the loss of human life as long as it means they get to continue with their experiments, and the military will stop at nothing to silence the truth from getting out to the public,  which leaves us with a protagonist whose body count is probably more than the actual monster in the film.

The film’s final act dares to have an emotionally driven retrospective of the franchise as if anyone who has seen all three movies will have fond memories of them when it’s all said and done. 

There will be a strong debate about the worst comic book movie of the year and Sony has two of them with a third film coming down the road. The common denominator of the critical failures of this franchise is writer and director Kelly  Marcel who is responsible for the screenplay of all three movies. And when it’s all said and done Kelly delivers one of the most incoherent comic book franchises to ever exist.

 Whether Venom is cinematically the worst comic book Trilogy of all time is up for the audience to decide but Venom the Last Dance certainly does not help the case against such a claim.

Don’t forget to Subscribe for Updates. Also, Follow Us at Society-Reviews, YouTube,  Twitter, Odysee, Rumble, and Twitch