Morbius: A Review
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This super-vampire movie sucks.
Unless you are a comic book aficionado, you probably had never heard of the character Morbius prior to the marketing campaign for the new aptly titled Sony movie, Morbius, that arrived in theatres this Friday. If you have the great misfortune of seeing this movie, you’ll no doubt wish you could return to that pre-Morbius golden age of ignorance.
Morbius is a D-level superhero in the Marvel universe. That doesn’t mean that he’s a useless character, he isn’t, in fact, having read a bunch of comics featuring Morbius I can say that he’s pretty fascinating and definitely worthy of a big screen adaptation…just not THIS big-screen adaptation.
Morbius is a rather unorthodox comic book character best described as a self-made, self-loathing vampire, basically a good guy who does bad things. But director Daniel Espinoza and screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless churn out the most generic and painfully bland film to tell Morbius’ tale.
Morbius’ background is that he was born with this painful and terrible blood disease that requires him to get complete blood transfusions three times a day. But he’s also a genius, so he develops a type of artificial blood, which earns him a Nobel Prize, which he refuses for some reason.
Morbius then turns his attention to a special kind of bat and trying to fuse the bat DNA to human DNA in order to help his blood coagulate. This leads to a bunch of scenes where Morbius, like Batman’s alter-ego Bruce Wayne, is surrounded by a cauldron of bats who, for some reason, accept him as one of their own. When Morbius then injects himself with bat/human hybrid DNA in order to cure his disease, it leads to very unexpected complications.
Morbius is a dark story, as he’s more villain than hero, but Morbius the movie not only can’t walk that archetypal and tonal tightrope, it ignores it altogether and like a blind, deaf and dumb Wallenda steps-out off of the ledge and falls ninety stories flat on its face leaving little but a blood splatter in the shape of a clown face.
Morbius is an incoherent mess of a movie that boasts atrocious visual effects, embarrassing action sequences, and utterly incomprehensible characters and plot. In short…this movie sucks, pun intended.
It’s striking how abominable the visual effects are in the movie, as Morbius’ super-fast movements are reduced to just color trails like in a Roadrunner cartoon. The only thing missing was a snarling, jagged toothed “Meep-Meep”. This approach renders all of the fight sequences utterly impotent. The rest of the film is just as visually mundane as the fight sequences and visual effects.
Across the board the cast are adrift in a drab ocean of lethargy, just like the ship in the film where Morbius does his experiments…which is named the Murnau – after F.W. Murnau the director of the classic vampire movie Nosferatu. Clever.
Jared Leto plays Morbius and coasts through the movie like a stoned Jordan Catalano at a first period math class. The impossibly handsome Leto has mastered the art of having his eyes be both beautiful and blank at the same time. I’ve seen Cigar Store Wooden Indian with more spark in their eyes.
Matt Smith plays Morbius’ childhood friend Milo, also a victim of the same blood disease, and it feels like he showed up from another, even worse movie.
Adrian Arjona plays Martine Bancroft, a doctor who is Morbuis’ co-worker/accomplice/love interest. Dr. Bancroft is not so much a character as a piece of furniture that talks. What is astonishing about Ms. Arjona’s performance is how relentlessly anemic it is. She may be the least charismatic human being to ever appear in a major role in a super hero film. Of course, the character is so poorly written as to be egregious so it’s not all Ms. Arjona’s fault that it doesn’t work, but she certainly doesn’t help matters.
Morbius’ failing may be a result of director Espinoza’s incompetency, or it might be due to too many Sony suits with too many bad ideas and too much power to make them happen. Or, and this is the more likely scenario, it’s an odious combination of the two.
No matter who’s fault it is, there’s no denying that this movie is, in its own D-level comic book character way, a disaster.
Unlike the rest of the Marvel characters which are owned by Disney, Sony controls Spider-Man and the “Spider-verse”, which includes a bunch of Spider-Man villains, including Venom, which has had two solo movies, and now Morbius, as well as Kraven, who has a movie coming next year.
Judging by the two lackluster post-credit scenes in Mobius, Sony is either trying to create a team of Spider-verse villains to take on Spidey and compete ‘solo’ against the MCU monstrosity, or it’s trying to develop more characters to sprinkle in to the MCU movies and share in the wealth. But if Morbius is any indication, Sony’s master plan faces a very steep climb and minimal chance at success.
The bottom line is, as good as Spider-Man: No Way Home was, Morbius is just as awful. You’d be more entertained using a hot spoon and a plastic straw to drain every ounce of blood from your own body than you will be sitting there for an hour and forty-five minutes watching this toothless cinematic venture.
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