I’ve actually been looking forward to Morbius. Unlike Venom, where after two movies I still don’t see Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, Jared Leto seems like great casting to me, in the role of Dr. Michael Morbius, the Living Vampire. I also own a couple of Morbius comics myself, so I have some familiarity with the character. Morbius seems like he has the potential to be a great anti-hero from the Spider-Man universe, and I’m all for some more exciting comic-book action.
Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) is an experimental scientist, suffering from a rare and debilitating blood condition, and has dedicated his research to finding a cure. After an experiment goes wrong in international waters, Morbius mutates into a beast that must drink human blood to survive, and leaves a trail of bodies in his wake. FBI Agents Simon Stroud (Tyrese Gibson) and Alberto ‘Al’ Rodriguez (Al Madrigal) close in on detaining Morbius, as he regains his lucidity, and works to reverse this wild condition, alongside his ally and fellow doctor, Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona). Before long, a bigger threat emerges, one that shows little remorse for the lives he takes, and it’s up to Morbius to take responsibility for the deadly consequences of his research. Morbius is directed by Daniel Espinosa.
I can’t believe this movie is so ugly. If I had a $100 for every second the events on screen are indiscernible, I’d be a millionaire. There are fast-paced action scenes where the camera is swirling and cutting erratically, and my only response is that I know movies can be composed much more elegantly than this; less shaky-cam and better tracking. There’s a couple of sequences early on where I feel like the movie is experimenting with Christopher Nolan’s splice editing, where different scenes play out as the dialogue continues over the top from the previous scene, and Morbius proves an interesting study into how that doesn’t work if done poorly, although it would take a more technically trained mind than mine to explain it – I hope that video comes, internet! On top of this, some of the shot selections jumped my radar – at one point, Michael and his friend Milo (Matt Smith) are sitting on a park bench, and it’s like the camera is too low or too far behind them, capturing their shoulders and like, 10% of their faces. When I’m trying to lose myself in a story, I shouldn’t notice stuff like this, and if I do, you would hope the outcome would be positive. It’s almost like it was done to hide the fact that our actors aren’t on location, but they’re sitting on a park bench! Perhaps it was reshoots.
But if only the camera work was a major disappointment alone; the script is also terrible. This is the superhero movie that naysayers think about in their head when they’re adamant that comic book stories are childish. Because this story is moronically lazy. It’s like the movie was reverse-engineered, where in each scene the movie knew what it wanted it’s characters to say by the end, and put little thought into finding the words to get them there logically. This genuinely happens more than ten times; I’d fry my brain if I tried to remember all the moments of empty rhetoric, but I’ll detail one – the movie opens with Dr. Morbius flown by private helicopter to a secluded cave. The helicopter pilot opens the passenger door for a feeble Morbius to hobble out on crutches. The pilot asks Morbius, ‘do you need a doctor?’ in which Morbius responds, ‘I am a doctor’ – a cheap way for the movie to inform us that this man we are seeing for the first time is a doctor; okay. But wouldn’t the pilot have seen Morbius hobble into the chopper in the first place? Did the people who hired this helicopter not inform the pilot that Morbius was frail, or a doctor conducting research, if it were not Morbius himself? And if Morbius does need a doctor, how are you going to get him one at the mouth of a bat cave in the middle of the jungle? Who even asks, ‘ do you need a doctor?’ ahead of ‘hey, are you okay?’? You may think I’m thinking too much into this, but I don’t have to when the examples of this dogged writing continued to jump out at me.
The first ten minutes of this movie whirl around at a continuing rapid daze, too preoccupied with itself to let me in. I don’t completely understand this ailing blood condition, where there seems to be an entire hospital dedicated towards housing the sick in Greece – these sufferers need to get their blood cleaned every few hours or they’ll die, but sometimes they die anyway? So Michael and Milo must live in a constant fear of death, but it’s also a miracle that they’ve lived this long? How does that make them feel? Only like Spartans? I don’t understand the covert research into finding a cure either – for some reason, it’s decided that it’s unethical to experiment by adding bat saliva to the bloodstream; why? Don’t people live with pig valves in their hearts, and didn’t the vaccine for smallpox come from cows? Plus, since Dr. Morbius is a Nobel Prize winning scientist for inventing synthetic blood, didn’t there come a time where he had to take that concoction to human trials too? How can experimenting on a mouse yield any sort of results unless that mouse has the same rare blood condition? And I can’t for the life of me figure out what Dr. Morbius cutting his hand in front of the bat cave has got to do with his experimentation either, other than show that the bats won’t touch his blood (while endangering those around him), which he wears as a badge of honour later after the transformation anyway 😠 That opening scene strikes me as one that looked too cool to cut, even though it has no place in the movie. Actually, looking at the trailer again, it seems a lot of the scenes were reshuffled – Agent Stroud says that Morbius has been missing for two months in the trailer, but in the movie, that never happens. But lastly, with the movie we got, I don’t even think I understand how the vampire qualities within Morbius work; does it live inside him like the Hulk, taking over when Morbius is hungry, or is it like the Human Torch, where he can turn it on at will – at times it feels like both, but it could be neither. The only part I do understand is the sonar ability, with his ears flickering and his eyes swirling, and it’s maybe only because I understand it, but that technique is pretty cool.
Perhaps the only joyous moment for me comes when Milo is feeling out his new body, dancing and getting dressed in the mirror, after he transforms. I still maintain that Jared Leto is a fine choice for Morbius, and it’s not his fault, Matt Smith’s, Adria Arjona’s, or Jared Harris’, as the young boy’s carer, that this movie stinks. I thought a lot about Iron Man while watching this movie, as the origin story that cemented the MCU as a reputable and viable franchise, with a narrative so tight, that Morbius really could’ve, and should’ve, openly cribbed from that in order to improve this movie. Because in Iron Man, it wasn’t just that Tony Stark became a superhero and fought bad guys; his unexpected transformation had ramifications for how Stark saw himself, as a self-absorbed weapons manufacturer who wanted to change his focus. And it affected his personal relationships, with Obadiah Stane seeing this new technological achievement as a gold mine. A lot of these superhero stories eventually have their characters facing off against their physical equivalent – Iron Man & Iron Monger, Hulk & Abomination, Ant-Man & Yellowjacket, Black Panther & Killmonger, Venom & Riot, Luke Cage & Diamondback, Scarlett Witch & Agatha Harkness etc. – and it’s the emotional turmoil, the struggle within, that urges us to invest in the tussle; Morbius is crying out for some relatability, and it seems to be there if the movie had given it a modicum of thought. As it is, Milo is simply annoyed that Morbius won’t accept what he is, but how about how Morbius wants to withhold the opportunity for Milo to finally feel better; an albeit short-sighted cure that Milo has funded and paid for? How about how Dr. Morbius has forged a way in the world, as a ground-breaking doctor with a social standing, despite his condition, and an unexpected empathy for people, while Milo has used his money to get by, shielding himself, and maintaining an anger with a community at arms-length? Milo has always looked up to a somewhat callous and jaded Morbius who won’t accept his Nobel Prize, even rolling with the dismissive nickname of Milo, when his real name is Lucien, that Michael gave him from when they first met. Now, with Michael holding out on a lure of strength, it’s the final straw in what could’ve been an investing, strained and nuanced relationship. Oh well.
It’s rare that I’m sitting in a cinema with a movie playing and feeling like I’m wasting my time. I’m also disgusted that the trailer gave us so much Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton), and graffiti work linking Morbius to Spider-Man, when they have nothing to do with this movie – if Sony wanted to beef up interest in Morbius, why didn’t they spend more time overlooking the actual production to make a decent movie? In the past, I feel I’ve been accepting of even bad comic-book movies because I’ve just enjoyed seeing the wonderfully colourful characters come to life on the big screen, but Morbius has to be in the bottom five Marvel movies ever made, without a doubt. It’s vapid, it’s utter crap. Usually when the next comic-book property gets announced, it increases the value of the memorabilia surrounding it, but I think the price for my Morbius comics just went through the floor 😔 I pity Jared Leto; despite me picking at him for House of Gucci, he’s now receiving hate for being in the worst Marvel movie AND the worse DCEU movie to date, with Suicide Squad. But spare a thought for Michael Keaton too; the MCU’s Vulture just got traded to the worse timeline.
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P.S. I have to say, that any time the police, or most other people in this movie, see Morbius’ face alter, they hardly react. This is a living vampire! You’re unequipped to deal with this! You’ve never seen anything like it, and your reaction should be more than just calling for back-up and just saying, ‘woah’ 😠😠
P.P.S I’ve just noticed that the font used for ‘Morbius’ is a cool purple when the movie starts, and doesn’t even match the poster’s title – take some pride in your work, and find some uniformity in your style, movie! Bah!
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