Horses and fishes and frogs, oh my! Anything and everything gets Venom-ized in The Last Dance, a self-serious trilogy capper that largely forgets what made the first two installments in this franchise so delightful. It would seem even Hollywood’s most unconventional superhero series can’t avoid “end of the world” stakes in its apparent final entry.

We cold-open on Knull, Sony’s front-runner for the “Thanos” position in their shared Spider-Man-adjacent cinematic universe, both because he’s poised to be a multi-movie villain and because his first appearance consists of him exclusively sitting in a big chair amidst a backwash of CGI gobbledygook. Dubiously portrayed by Venom: Let There Be Carnage director Andy Serkis (I have the sneaking suspicion that this first turn as Knull was exclusively a voice role and not one that employed Serkis’ expertise in the motion capture space), Knull wants to destroy the world. Or the universe. Or whatever. Though, unlike Thanos, his throne-bound state isn’t by choice; his creations, the symbiotes, betrayed him and trapped him on his seat of imprisonment.

Speaking of the purple menace that plagued the Avengers, that’s exactly who we find Eddie/Venom discussing — with the same level of specificity, I might add. Sony’s references to Marvel characters outside its purview seem to stop at skin color and an obsession with stones. We last saw Eddie/Venom having this same tipsy conversation about the MCU’s big bad in the post-credit scene of the last Tom Holland-led Spider-Man film, as Tom Hardy’s character(s) bewilderedly questioned a bartender (Cristo Fernández, of Ted Lasso fame) about the universe the odd couple found themselves in. A portal opens up, sucking Eddie/Venom back into their own Spider-Man-less universe, conveniently confirmed by a quick change in Fernández’s hair, and Venom: The Last Dance can finally begin.

Wanted for the murder of a very-alive Detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham), Eddie has become an international fugitive after the events of the previous film. Not content with living out his life hiding in Mexico, Eddie resolves to return to New York and blackmail the judge who kicked him out of the Big Apple into clearing his name. Why Eddie didn’t use his leverage over the judge to avoid exile in the first place is unexplained, though it doesn’t quite matter, as Eddie and his better half never make it past Nevada.

After letting Venom loose to devour some dogfighters — Venom requires fuel for this journey, after all — the pair embark on what becomes a buddy-comedy road trip. When focused on Eddie and Venom traversing the countryside, the movie is pure gold, as Tom Hardy’s delightfully strange rapport with the big, black, gooey creature still hasn’t lost its charm through three outings. Unfortunately, this is a comic book movie, so there are bumps along the way, often resolving in poorly staged, shoddily VFX-ed punch-ups.

Two key groups pursue Eddie and Venom throughout the movie, and the fact that they keep interrupting our guy’s shenanigans should give you all the reason you need to despise their guts. The first is, of course, Knull via his alien-hunting-dog-esque creatures, the Xenophages. When a symbiote resurrects its host, it creates a “codex” that can unlock Knull’s prison, and Venom apparently did this in the first movie (in case you weren’t paying attention). Now, whenever Eddie fully transforms into Venom, the codex’s homing beacon activates, and the Xenophages come a-calling — a decision that feels less motivated by natural story beats and more like a stipulation imposed by Tom Hardy’s agent to ensure his client’s face is in as much of this movie as possible.

The second group hot on our favorite unlikely duo’s trail is Imperium, a clandestine government organization operating out of the subterranean basement of the soon-to-be-decommissioned Area 51. This secret agency’s primary goal is to study the symbiotes who crashed on Earth way back in 2018’s Venom, making Eddie and Venom natural targets. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Rex Strickland oversees containment, while Juno Temple’s Teddy Payne handles research. They almost exclusively vomit exposition at one another, with only Teddy being given a modicum of character development by way of a tragic backstory.

The film settles into a rhythm of Eddie and Venom being besieged by Imperium soldiers, forcing Eddie to transform, which attracts the Xenophages, which in turn forces Venom to retreat. Eventually, they’re picked up by a traveling family of hippies — or at least, hippie parents with undecided children — on their way to catch a final glimpse of Area 51. Predictably, this development leads all The Last Dance’s plotlines to converge, as neatly as a Venom film with multiple storylines could hope to. The family patriarch, played by Rhys Ifans (an alum of Sony’s Spider-Man films), gets an almost ridiculous amount of screen time, despite ultimately not revealing the character fans might have expected after Sony slipped him into the trailer.

Throwing the franchise’s longtime screenwriter into the deep end by allowing them to direct their first movie, with all the baggage and expectation that comes with a production budget north of $100 million, has a precedent for failure (see Simon Kinberg’s Dark Phoenix). But to Kelly Marcel’s credit, The Last Dance is no more disjointed or slapdash than the journeyman-directed first entry or actor-turned-director-helmed second entry. If anything, Marcel could benefit from tightening up her pacing — the first two Venoms excelled at being fast-paced, blink-and-the-movie’s-over adventures — as the film grinds to a crawl anytime Tom Hardy isn’t holding the screen, a shockingly frequent occurrence in The Last Dance’s 109 minutes.

When Venom: The Last Dance focuses on Eddie and Venom’s cycle of bickering, bonding, and blowing off steam, it delivers on the promise that has kept fans returning for more of these oddball blockbusters. The simple joy of watching Hardy argue with brain-hungry goo is worth the price of admission, and a whole movie about Venom developing a gambling addiction and doing dance numbers with franchise favorite Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) would keep me in a theater recliner longer than Knull on his throne.

Unfortunately, The Last Dance can’t resist buttoning itself up to fall in line with superhero third-installment clichés, bombarding audiences with stale set pieces and repetitive symbiote brawls that can’t rival the unique appeal of Venom himself. The film flirts with a so-bad-it’s-good appeal, especially in a hilariously earnest attempt at a tear-jerker ending. This gesture is so endearingly misguided that it nearly becomes effective, as if the beloved black goo monster had tragically passed mid-production and the finale is a touching tribute to a generation-defining performer. To call it moving would be insane; to say it’s not would be a lie.

Quality be damned, I love these silly movies and their even sillier protagonist. Be it a ’90s throwback superhero flick, an LGBTQ+ coded rom-com (with a genuinely unhinged Woody Harrelson performance to boot), or a story about a man road-tripping with his inner demon, any movie with Venom will get my ticket. The Last Dance’s two post-credit scenes suggest that this is goodbye for now rather than forever. Here’s hoping that the next film remembers what makes Venom so special: in a world of pretentious excess, one puddle of black muck dares to be genuinely fun.