TThe recent, long-awaited crash of the superhero movie (with one notable Deadpool-sized exception) has led to a mad scramble – pushing back release dates, adjusting marketing strategies, bribing Robert Downey Jr. – and a worried question mark over the future could be for Hollywood's most commercially lucrative contemporary Genre apply. The Venom franchise, which launched in 2018 to surprising success, already felt like a throwback to an earlier era – a shiny and light-hearted burst of mid-2000s nostalgia – but now that its third and final chapter has been released It's so stressful. At the same time, it also feels like a throwback to a more recent time when these films meant more to audiences.

It remains to be seen whether something like “Venom: The Last Dance” will generate enough of a response (the second film posted a $350 million drop at the global box office and the third is aiming for a franchise-low opening), but After all, it's such a cleverly planned conclusion to a harmlessly silly and low-risk series in which Tom Hardy and his speedy alien symbiote jump off a sinking ship with a spring in their step. It's not as disastrous as “Madame Web” or as unnecessary as “The Marvels” or as annoying as “Deadpool & Wolverine,” that's what it is Only Roughly passable in a throwaway kind of way, blessed with a surprisingly short running time that doesn't allow it to become annoying or draining. If only it would amuse and excite us a little more.

The novelty of Hardy battling a dance-loving, head-eating, chocolate-eating alien living inside him wore off in the mediocre second outing, where the first film's co-writer Kelly Marcel took sole credit. She returns here, also debuting as a director, and brings with her the same problems, as she doesn't find the funny in the absurd conceit and her dialogue bafflingly refuses to make us laugh even once. The lack of foreboding has always been one of the franchise's main selling points, but it hasn't been translated into enough genuine humor, which is much more apparent this time around. Hardy is as committed as ever, returning as journalist Eddie Brock, who we left last time when he was kidnapped into the multiverse that Tom Holland's Spider-Man had just escaped to.

But his time there is short, and he returns to his world after just one scene and a dig at how tiring the multiverse is (it's hard to tell if this was always intentional or a rethought result of a shrinking genre). A clunky and convoluted cold open takes us into the danger of impending war, as Eddie and Venom find themselves on the run from not only the authorities, but also another alien pursuing them in search of a magical cortex that would help , to free a new great evil. Their journey intersects with a family searching for aliens (led by Rhys Ifans), the military (led by Chiwetel Ejiofor) and some scientists (led by Juno Temple), as well as a figure from his past (Stephen Graham). Perhaps the strangest thing about a film that is so desperate to be called strange is the amount of British actors playing Americans…

It's fast and brash and seems aware of how silly a lot of it is, but it's also uncomfortably crowded. There are jokes without punchlines (a tertiary character's obsession with Christmas falls flat), unnecessary backstory (Temple's scientist gets a dead brother we never needed to know about), and a villain we never really get to see in full (he's supposed to be be a part of it). Sony's upcoming, heavily delayed film Kraven the Hunter). While it's a mercy to watch such a short superhero film in an age where even evil clown horror films last over two hours, it also has the halting interruption of something that caused endless headaches in the editing room. Marcel is a director of pretentious competence and, like many others in this world, loses himself in a hectic, hard-to-follow finale full of claps and gunfire.

An abrupt, Maroon 5-soundtracked joke of an ending reveals that it was all one big joke, a relief in a way that even the series' supposed conclusion isn't aimed at unattainable emotions, but also a reminder of utter disposableness . You may remember where this franchise started, but you'll have a hard time remembering how it ends.