Watched: 03/22/2025
Format: FX Movies
Viewing: First
Director: Michael Espinosa
A movie whose reputation proceeds it, Morbius (2022) was met with critical derision, a fan base that showed up *ironically*, and a star who seemed to agree - we can all have a laugh at this movie.
I don't even really know what's wrong with Morbius - but, yes, the vibe is off. Nonetheless, I'll speculate based on the final product.
Unlike Madame Web, you don't have the immediate feeling "something is very, very wrong" in the first five minutes. Morbius really takes its time to utterly fall apart and admit no one knew what to do with this character once they had him.
I'd even argue the first 1/3rd of the film is entertainingly campy - or at least made for a good laugh as I put it on whilst on the elliptical. Jared Leto plays the very-ill but brilliant Michael Morbius, who we're to believe has grown to be a 30-something adult while requiring thrice-daily dialysis. As a child, he befriends "Milo" - later played by Dr. Who's Matt Smith - and they have a working/ parental relationship with Jared Harris.
Years later, Morby has invented artificial blood (neat!) for use in trauma victims, etc... but has not found a cure for the illness he and Matt Smith share. He apparently wins the Nobel Prize - something worth real cash money and the guarantee of massive financial support for research - and tells everyone in Sweden to go to hell - what he produced with his fake blood was a mistake.
This is the equivalent of saying "I didn't mean to make Penicillin - I was looking at bacteria in a lab. I hate how science works, you're all stupid. Do not give me money."
Lady in this movie is played by Hit Man's Adria Arjona, who should be in everything. She's definitely the love interest imported from a 90's superhero movie here, ie: a smart, capable hostage/ victim. Here, a doctor working alongside The Morb.
Michael invents a way to use the DNA from vampire bats from Costa Rica (these Sony movies love sourcing super powers from Central/ South American jungles) to fix his condition. Except - it doesn't, exactly. It turns him into a magical vampire. Science.
Like, look, I could give a shit if this is stupid or not. The Hulk got his powers from Gamma Rays, the FF from Cosmic Rays, and Spider-Man was bit by a radioactive spider. My favorite super-dude is from space, and Wondy is made out of clay. Comics are dumb if you look directly at them.
For reasons not in the least bit clear, Michael and Hot Doctor have the wealthy Matt Smith put them on a cargo ship where they conduct their experiments. The ship is crewed exclusively by guys carrying machine guns who seem hostile to our doctors. I literally do not understand any of that, but its what the movie says is happening.
Turns out the experiment makes Ol' Morby a supernatural beast who wants to feed on the blood of people. The guys with guns are rude to HotDoc, that's enough reason for Michael to kill everyone onboard but HotDoc.
By the way, ALL of this seems like a very long walk to draw some comparison between the Demeter washing up in England in Dracula and Morbius's own ghost ship arriving in New York. They even name the ship The Murnau, as in FW Murnau who directed Nosferatu back in 1922. Enter our FBI agents, who seem to be referencing Venom in their first appearance, played by Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal.
Soon, Milo figures out what Michael did, and off-screen *somehow* conducts the same steps as Michael and becomes his evil, much funnier opposite.
Anyway, this movie has the best relationship with bats, who it seems to think just fly endlessly in tornadoes if you put them in a glass cylinder. And can lift the weight of a man if they all team up. They don't need to eat or nuthin'. And are constantly in motion.
Once the boat has arrived in New York, the movie just has no idea what to do with itself. It's not about the heroics of Michael Morbius, it's about Michael skulking around realizing he's now a monster. It's about Milo enjoying not being sick and/ or being evil now. A whole-ass plotline exists about Michael only being able to depend on the fake blood for so long, and then he'll need to start using real human blood, and that whole thread never gets resolved, even though we know when he drinks real blood he's a monster so, about a week after this movie, he should be murdering most of New York.
Yes, there's a big fight between Michael and Milo at the end, but its utterly perfunctory. And like all superhero movies made between 2019 and 2024, it just assumes there will be a sequel, and so leaves dangling threads - like, HotDoc is killed by Milo but comes back to life in the final seconds of the movie.
No one is going to make that sequel. No matter how many Kravens and Madame Webs we throw at the screen.
Imho, this movie isn't as bad as the internet wanted it to be. The movie that was that bad was Madame Web. It's just regular bad, but there's something just off about Sony's Marvel movies as they try for a brand identity as a sort of dark reflection of the MCU, like they just can't quite make them campy enough, or find the charm in the ridiculousness. Instead, the product is just sorta generic urban fantasy movies that seem like nobody involved really cares, but they do want money, please.
Who directed this movie? Does it matter? Who wrote it, and why? Was Michael actually a good guy? Or just a guy in extraordinary circumstances? Does he do anything heroic, or are we watching a series of things happen in the rough framing of a basic action movie? What happens if he fails? What are the stakes and do any of us care? If Michael actually lost, what would the audience feel?
And I think the answer is - this movie is boring. It didn't have to be, but it is. I kept picking up my phone.
It's nothing you've not seen before, storywise, which feels odd to say. But it's also essentially the same formula from Iron Man or Superman II with an evil opposite, etc. Making them both blood thirsty vampires is stuff that's been played with elsewhere, from Near Dark to other b-horror flicks. The FX are nice, but someone needed to say "less is more" and "not in direct light". And it would be nice if anyone involved knew one thing about bats.
People didn't really get "superhero fatigue", but they do get that some of these movies are not something anyone cares about even as they're being made. People don't want to be bored and if you spent $40 on tickets to see a movie with your partner, you want someone to care. But this kind of movie does exist so I can say Captain America: Brave New World was mid-tier instead of bad.
Morbius is what happens when no one cares (and Madame Web is what happens when you're just hostile to the very movie you're making).
I think Morbius might have been fun as a Blade supporting character, but on his own, there's just not much there there.
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