To say that I have been eagerly awaiting this third Venom installment is an understatement.
After all, I found the 2021 sequel “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” to be such a letdown that you’d think I would stop keeping my hopes up.
Well, this one has captured my attention since the trailer dropped months ago and every subsequent cinematic reminder has only kept me pumped for “Venom: The Last Dance.”
The movie itself is like almost any other superhero movie except for the parasitic friendship between Tom Hardy’s Venom and Eddie Brock.
I’m also always amused to see Venom inhabiting other hosts – inanimate and living alike.
Plus, Eddie and Venom’s banter is a nonstop source of laughs for me.
Venom: The Last Dance is a 2024 American superhero film written and directed by Kelly Marcel, which features the Marvel Comics character Venom.
It serves as the final installment of the Venom trilogy following Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), it is the fifth film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU).
It stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock and Venom, alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, Clark Backo, Alanna Ubach, and Andy Serkis.
The film is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images, and strong language and clocks in at 109 minutes long.
Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote (Hardy) are drunk in a bar in Mexico while still on the run after their recent battle with Carnage.
The murder of Detective Patrick Mulligan (Graham) makes international headlines with Eddie being named the prime suspect, forcing him to set out to New York City and attempt to clear his name.
Not known to either of them, a creature known as a Xenophage has begun tracking Eddie and Venom.
The recent events catch the attention of Rex Strickland (Ejiofor), a soldier who oversees Imperium, a government operation at the site of the soon-to-be-decommissioned Area 51 for the capture and study of other symbiotes that have fallen to Earth.
Mulligan, revealed to have survived his encounter with Carnage, is captured after being left for dead by another symbiote, who eluded Strickland’s soldiers.
He is bonded with one of many contained symbiotes and questioned by Imperium researchers Dr. Teddy Payne (Temple) and Sadie Christmas (Backo) to learn about the symbiotes’ purpose on Earth before Strickland is ordered to bring Venom down.
While attaching themselves onto the side of an airplane bound for New York City Eddie and Venom are attacked by the Xenophage tracking them and are forced to drop off into a stretch of desert near the Grand Canyon.
Venom explains to Eddie that Xenophages were unleashed into the universe by Knull (Serkis), the creator of the symbiotes, to retrieve a Codex - which is forged when a symbiote resurrects its host.
This can be used to free Knull from the prison the symbiotes trapped him in long ago.
Because Venom revived Eddie once before, he now carries a Codex that the Xenophage has now tracked to Earth.
Overall, the film is a worthy albeit bittersweet end for the Venom trilogy and the friendship between Eddie and Venom.
I think I’m actually going to miss their one-liners in the future.
However, I do have to say that you should look out for mid and post-credit scenes after the film is over!
