Overview: In Venom: The Last Dance, Tom Hardy returns as Venom, one of Marvel’s greatest and most complex characters, for the final film in the trilogy. Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.

Verdict: The third and final episode in the Venom saga issues a third and final reminder that the world never really needed a Venom saga in the first place. Once again, an incongruously excitable Tom Hardy stars as Eddie Brock, the longtime loser who’s been something of a winner ever since a smart-aleck alien symbiote named Venom (also voiced by Hardy) started living rent-free inside his body.

The same uneven entertainment equation that blighted the first two Venom movies remains firmly fixed in place: for every occasional minute of great stuff, you must sit through six minutes of grating stuff. You’ll find the great stuff on the far fringes of Hardy’s hyperactive performance style, where he clearly ignores the script and starts going off on tangents of his own making.

As for the grating stuff, much of that occurs when the filmmakers pay too much attention to the script, and dual fogs of confusion and boredom descend on the viewer.