It is never good when a movie gets delayed for years at a
time, even if that was due to a pandemic. Unfortunately for Morbius, a lot of
folks had cemented opinions prior to it being released. And while it is not a great movie, it
certainly isn’t the worst I have seen.
Morbius begins with introducing us to Dr. Michael Morbius, a doctor with a rare blood disorder. He is going to great lengths to try to cure himself and others who suffer from the disease, including studying vampire bats. Well, sure enough, his experiments go wrong – or very right? – and he ends up with bat-like superpowers, but also the hunger for blood. This is not the huge drawback it might be for another person as Dr. Morbius is already world-recognized for inventing artificial blood. We even get to see him turn down the Nobel prize for that invention. He may have a cure for his disease, but he feels the side effects are too great to bear. That doesn’t stop his friend and wealthy benefactor (who shares his disease) from stealing a dose of the cure, without the moral hangups of Morbius.
This movie benefits if you go in with either zero or below zero expectations. I went in assuming it would be absolute trash and was pleasantly surprised. It is not great, and there are multiple issues but I found plenty of things to enjoy. Director Daniel Espinosa kept it short and sweet with a couple of nonsense fight scenes that work pretty well. The story is lackluster, and as much as I hate a ticking clock or rushed timeline troupe, this really needed some stakes that had to be done by a certain time. As it is – the story is simply two dudes fighting. The one other person we see Dr. Morbius treating they put into a coma and seem to be fine waiting to determine if further testing will solve the issue. I would have liked there to be some sort of ‘we need a cure by midnight tonight or we will lose all 30 of these patients’ while the ‘villain’ hounds Morbius for his own personal reasons. Or even if the villain wanted the cure not only for himself, but for monetary reasons…as it is, there really isn’t any reason involved. Even the two cops on the case are not that interested in pursuing much of anything. The vampire effects and fights are campy fun, as well as Morbius’s overall look. Leto actually pushed to use CGI for the face instead of prosthetics – an unusual move for him – and I think that was the right call. He and Matt Smith seem to be having a great time, and the rest of the cast is certainly game enough.
This may be the most Jared Leto character I have seen Jared
Leto play – he feels like a rock star vampire and Leto is perfect at that.
Instead of Depping into prosthetics, makeup, and costumes, Leto takes this
opportunity to slink around and embrace the strangeness and sudden superhuman skills
of Morbius. I enjoyed him discovering his powers, but that montage could have
been a little more unified and tighter.
Matt Smith also has fun as ‘Milo’, which is not his name but
a nickname Morbius gives him when they are children. He has the same disease
but is also super wealthy, so he funds Morbius’s research, getting very testy
after seeing the positive effects on Michael and getting refused the same treatment. Of course, he steals it and where Morbius
sees the vampire side effects as a curse, Milo revels in them. Like I said, I wanted more from the reasons
he keeps chasing after him, but I guess ‘general bad guy reasons’ suffices for
this movie.
Adria Arjona plays Dr. Martine Bancroft, who helps Morbius
with his research, development, and shady international-waters human
experimentation. Their relationship starts off as business and grows into flirty-ness
just fast enough for her to get captured by the bad guy so Morbius has to
rescue her.
Jared Harris plays Dr. Nicholas, who raised both Morbius and
Milo in the orphanage for sick kids that he seems to run. He keeps tabs on both of them as they get
older, helping with research and treatments and really just hanging around so
that Milo can kill him later to prove to Morbius he is beyond saving.
Tyrese Gibson plays Agent Stroud and Al Madrigal plays Agent Rodriguez and they seem to think they are in two different movies. Madrigal got it more right. He plays the camp and humor, bringing holy water to an interrogation of Morbius (I could have used a little more vampire-based snark and humor). Tyrese plays it far too straight for a movie this silly.
This movie also suffers from being released after No Way Home when it was probably originally intended to be released before. It wants to shoehorn the cracked multiverse and sinister six tie-ins and really none of that is necessary. It would have been better served to function as a stand-alone origin story. That way you can bring Morbius into other stories later on. Also – please keep in mind that while Morbius is a Marvel character, this is not an MCU movie. This is a Sony movie set in the Venom-verse. Which means that any other character cross-over cameos should have been Venom and no one else, especially if you are trying to sell Morbius as a hero/anti-hero.
Overall, the movie struggles on story, but is has some fun
effects and performances. It’s not
great, and it’s not terrible. Honestly, I do want another one, because I really
do want to see this Morbius encounter Tom Hardy’s Venom. And separate side-note
– if Mahershala Ali is Blade in the MCU, why not let Wesley Snipes step back
into Blade for this Sony verse? Because
obviously any living vampire is going to need to come up against Blade at some
point.
5 out of 10
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