On October 22, the super-hero comic adaptation film "Venom: The Last Dance" held its Chinese premiere in Beijing.

Fans gathered at the event, where the world's only "Venom Horse" installation made a stunning appearance, its striking design prompting many attendees to take photos. Reporters from Pengpai News noted a special reminder at the venue stating, "The character design is lifelike; we recommend that visitors with children take a detour."

The film will debut in mainland China on October 23, two days ahead of its release in the North American market.

Poster for "Venom: The Last Dance"

As a renowned "anti-hero" character under Marvel, Sony Pictures has adapted the Venom trilogy, with the first two installments released in 2018 and 2021. In this final chapter, "Venom: The Last Dance," Venom and Eddie (played by Tom Hardy) face their darkest hour—pursued relentlessly by a mysterious human organization while simultaneously battling an alien symbiote army invading Earth. United as one, they unleash new combat tactics across land, sea, and air. With both sides in hot pursuit, this desperate duo must join forces for an ultimate counterattack, marking the end of their "last dance."

Still from "Venom: The Last Dance"

Since taking on the role of Venom at the age of forty, British star Tom Hardy has spent seven years embodying this character. "It’s time to say goodbye. I truly love playing Eddie and Venom; it’s been the best experience of my life. Saying farewell to this series makes me a bit melancholy." In the trailer released earlier, Hardy's Eddie is seen walking alone through the nighttime streets of Mexico, the graffiti on a nearby wall boldly stating "NO TE PIERDAS" (Spanish for "Don’t Miss It"), perhaps reflecting the actor’s hopes for this farewell to the series.

Still from "Venom: The Last Dance"

As a co-writer of the previous two Venom films, as well as executive producer of the first and producer of the second, "Venom: The Last Dance" is also Kelly Marcel's directorial debut. She shared that Tom Hardy was involved from the script idea stage. "As my best friend, Tom is incredibly insightful and deeply understands these characters, brimming with inspiration. We spent an entire week discussing the story from morning till night at a hotel in London."

"The series is heavily inspired by the comics, and we greatly value fan feedback. However, we all understand that this will be the concluding chapter of the trilogy, so we must deeply explore the relationship between Venom and Eddie, making it more profound and infusing the film with emotional elements." Director Marcel noted that the duo's journey of escape in "Venom: The Last Dance" evokes many road movie tones, "They not only have to evade pursuers on Earth but also contend with the powerful forces pursuing them from the symbiote's home planet, Kuntal. Eddie and Venom are like a pair of frenemies; this time, they finally learn to coexist and reach a symbiotic state, yet they also realize that the longer they are together, the greater the threat they pose to the entire planet."

"Getting Venom to express emotions was a significant challenge for us," explained John Moffat, the film's visual effects supervisor. "Venom's facial structure is vastly different from humans—he has an exaggerated smile, huge eyes, but no ears. Therefore, during the animation process, we had to employ different gestures to convey his emotions. Kelly, Tom, and I have been working hard to make this CG character express a wealth of emotions because this film's story is filled with emotional elements."

Still from "Venom: The Last Dance"

In achieving this goal, Moffat worked closely with Tom Hardy. "We relied on Tom's performance as much as possible, allowing him to interact with Venom. Tom was very cooperative; we made his performance the core of our work rather than just demanding the visual effects meet certain standards. Everything was aimed at capturing the essence of Tom's performance."

In Marcel's view, the Venom character does not simply stem from the script or comics. During the filming of the first movie in the series, Hardy played a crucial role in shaping the symbiote, an influence that has persisted throughout. "Tom experimented with various voices and ultimately found Venom's unique vocal style. The moment we heard that voice, we knew it perfectly matched Venom's exaggerated dialogue style. This voice originally came from a voice memo Tom recorded where he said, 'I think Venom should sound like this.'

Correspondingly, the Chinese dubbed version of "Venom: The Last Dance" features the voice of comedian Jia Bing as Venom. To promote the film's release, he recently showcased his cooking skills in a short video, presenting four dishes: “Diced Pepper Fish Head,” “Braised Lion's Head,” “Spicy Duck Head,” and “Spicy Chicken Head.” His humorous remark, "Why are they all 'heads'? Because Venom loves to eat," brought smiles to many fans.

Still from "Venom: The Last Dance"