Critics aren’t bonding with Venom: The Last Dance. The first reviews are in for the third and final installment in the Tom Hardy-led trilogy set in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, and they range between “better than Venom: Let There Be Carnage” to “as bad as Madame Web.” But on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Venom 3 fared better than the last two Marvel-based Sony movies: the sci-fi road trip buddy comedy debuted with 40%, which is considered “rotten” but an above average score for the Sony-verse.
Venom 3 is better critically reviewed than 2018’s Venom (30%), 2022’s Morbius (15%), and 2024’s Madame Web (11%). The Andy Serkis-directed Venom: Let There Be Carnage, however, holds the best score of the franchise with a still-rotten 57%.
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The lukewarm early reception has the trilogy closer tracking for a franchise low opening weekend of $65 million, which would come in below Black Adam. Dwayne Johnson’s DC movie received a similar critical response (39%) and went on to gross $390 million globally after a $67 million opening weekend when it hit theaters this same weekend in 2022.
ComicBook’s Kofi Outlaw gave the movie 2 out of 5 stars, calling Venom: The Last Dance “a disappointing Sony-Marvel release to go alongside Madame Web” and adding that the studio “has no handle on this universe or what any of it has to do with Spider-Man.” See more excerpts from reviews around the web below.
RogerEbert.com: “When it leans hard into the inherent absurdity of its wacky, mismatched buddy antics, Venom: The Last Dance can be a total blast. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should. Far too frequently, Venom: The Last Dance makes the mistake of deviating from what worked in the previous two films, particularly the second movie in the franchise and the best of them all, 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage. It grinds to a halt and stops being a Venom movie in favor of dull developments at an underground lab, far beneath the surface of Area 51. Even more egregiously, it squanders the significant talents of Juno Temple and Chiwetel Ejiofor down there in one-note roles.”
Empire: “It’s third time unlucky for a series that still hasn’t worked out what it wants to be. The Last Dance can’t find its rhythm. If, as seems very likely, this concludes the Venom story in its current form, then it wraps up as a series that sadly never fulfilled its promise. There have been moments of gonzo enjoyment along the way, but like its title character, it is in essence just a dark, globby mess.”
Associated Press: “Bringing a typical comic book-style doomsday plot is about the last thing a Venom movie needs. The best sequences in the first two movies are no more complicated than Venom craving lobster or ordering pizza. Smaller stakes better suit its warped comedy. The touchstone for these movies shouldn’t be the Marvel playbook but old episodes of The Odd Couple. I kept rooting for the surprisingly lifeless Last Dance to pull way back on its save-the-world plot (and its CGI) and lean more into its most potent effect: Hardy’s split-personality double act. If this is to be a last hurrah — which, granted is a dubious idea for anything even adjacently connected to Spider-Man — it’s a shame that we never saw more of Venom in daily life.”
IndieWire: “Hardy has never really gotten the credit he deserves for giving one of the most difficult and dynamic performances that comic book movies have ever seen, and while The Last Dance gets away from that for long stretches at a time (even the wacky sequence where Venom inhabits a variety of different animals pulls focus from what this franchise does best), at least the film ends with a fittingly poignant/ridiculous tribute to the greatest love story ever told about a man and his symbiotic alien goo.
The Hollywood Reporter: “This being the concluding chapter of a trilogy, it all leads to an emotional catharsis that will no doubt satisfy fans of the earlier movies, with a sweet touch of cheesy humor to offset the melancholy. But the only thing that really matters on the way there is the affectionately tetchy rapport between Eddie and Venom, who have gotten progressively more comfortable in each other’s skins over the year they’ve been together … The action is bigger and louder, if at times messier, than that of its predecessors, but this is also the cuddliest of the three movies.”
Variety: “This one doesn’t overstay it’s welcome; it’s basically 90 minutes long before the closing credits (which include one of the most half-hearted teasers I’ve ever seen). Some will even say that the movie is touching — though given how much time we’ve spent with Eddie and the alien and all those oily thrashing tentacles, I didn’t necessarily feel this marked the ending of a beautiful friendship. The movie gives us a wistful montage of Venom’s key bonding moments set to Maroon 5’s “Memories,” and all I can say about this sequence is that it’s a whisper away from Saturday Night Live. The “Venom” movies have been a success, and sometimes fun, but I can’t say that they’ve really been good. More like comic-book place-holders that deliver. They’re also an object lesson in what can happen to an actor as arresting as Tom Hardy when he becomes a host body, merging with the alien of corporate filmmaking.”
In Venom: The Last Dance, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom are on the run, hunted by both their worlds: on Earth, by the military and off-world, by the God of the Symbiotes, Lord of the Abyss, King in Black: Knull. In the conclusion to the Venom trilogy, “The duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance,” per the synopsis.
Also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange), Juno Temple (Ted Lasso), Rhys Ifans (The Amazing Spider-Man), Alanna Ubach (Euphoria), Peggy Lu (reprising her role as Mrs. Chen), and Stephen Graham (reprising his Venom 2 role as Detective Mulligan), Venom 3 is in theaters Friday.
