Isaac Gramse ‘26
EE Staff Writer
When you think of Spider-Man villains, one of the first characters you think of is Venom. And for good reason, the idea of Venom is amazing: an alien symbiote that can bond to humans giving them special abilities at the price of negatively affecting the host’s mental state. Since 2018, Sony has attempted to bring this character to life with its own franchise starring Tom Hardy. Attempts that led to various forms of mediocrity. Spoilers ahead.
Now to be fair, Venom: The Last Dance was substantially better than Let There Be Carnage, however this is not a feat worth bragging about due to the quality (or rather lack of) of that movie.
The film starts with some random dude whose name I have already forgotten, who sends these symbiote hunters looking for a codex to free him from his prison. Now you might be wondering, “What the heck is a codex”? Well, Venom tells Eddie that a codex is only created if a symbiote brings its host back to life after it dies, as it makes a complete bond between symbiote and host.
Unfortunately for them, Eddie did in fact die in Let There Be Carnage, meaning that they are in possession of the codex, which can only be seen by the symbiote hunters when Venom is in his full form, which means that we barely see Venom in a Venom movie.
Now, the only way for the codex to be destroyed is if either Venom or Eddie dies, which seems to be forgotten as later on in the movie, they try to destroy it without the sacrifice of either one.
The movie also introduces this family of hippies who only exist to get Eddie Brock to Las Vegas. The film attempts to make you care for this family even though a majority of their screen time is spent breaking into Area 51, a highly illegal and highly dangerous action and especially irresponsible considering the father has his kids also commit this action.
The climax of the film depicts a bunch of symbiotes taking control of scientists to fight the symbiote hunters in an attempt to protect Venom. While cool to see multiple symbiotes in action, it contradicts the idea that it is very rare for a symbiote to find a host to bond with safely.
The fight does not end until Venom decides he must die with the symbiote hunters in order to keep Eddie safe, so Venom bonds with the hunters (somehow) and has this military man start an acid shower, killing both him and the hunters. Eddie, finally safe, goes to New York City to see the Statue of Liberty because Venom apparently always wanted to see it. The film ends with a montage of scenes from all three Venom movies with the song ‘Memories’ by Maroon 5 playing in the background.
While the film, like all the other Venom movies had its moments with some admittedly cool fights and comedic scenes, the story is pretty messy and it is unfortunate that we rarely get to see Venom in the film. The film also completely ignores the post credits scene from Spider-Man: No Way Home as it only played off as a joke, giving no explanation about what it meant.
Not to mention that in the movie Eddie Brock tells Venom that they have been together for a year at that point, even though Tom Hardy looks like he aged 50 years since the first Venom. All in all this film is not what you’re looking for if you want to watch a good movie, it would only be a good watch on one of those nights where you and your friends pick a bad movie to watch and spend the rest of the runtime absolutely laughing at its stupidity.