Midway through Venom: The Last Dance, Eddie and Venom find themselves at the end of their rope. They’re fugitives from the law, with no money and no shoes. But even at their lowest point, Venom’s sheer joy at being in Las Vegas is infectious, resulting in one of the funniest moments of the movie. After boasting about his alien-enhanced gambling skills, Venom instantly loses all their money to a glimmering slot machine. The scene only gets better when their old friend Mrs. Chen appears, glammed up and delighted to tear up the town with Eddie/Venom. But suddenly, the film cuts away to an underground bunker where a dour-faced Chiwetel Ejiofor swears vengeance on symbiotes. An audience member in my screening whispers a sad, “No, go back!” but, unfortunately, there’s no going back to the fun and silly Venom we used to know.
The Venom movies have always been, to borrow an internet slang term, very unserious. A glorified exercise in Tom Hardy doing weird voices, the franchise reached pseudo-cult status once fans embraced the queer undertones of the relationship between Eddie Brock and his outrageous alien symbiote. While Venom’s status as a camp icon was an accidental byproduct of the first film, the second, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, leaned into it. Sadly, the third and final entry of the franchise, Venom: The Last Dance, decides to inexplicably get serious, and in the process, loses the silly, campy spark that made the Venom movies such a weird joy to watch.
