Morbius

 

Morbius
Starring Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Ariona, Jared Harris
Directed by Daniel Espinosa

Sony is in a heap of trouble, and they can't seem to grasp that by clenching the Spider-Man subsidiary of Marvel in its tightened fist they're slowly digging their own graves. The lone holdout from giving the MCU complete creative control of, well, all of their own properties, Sony is trying in vain to make their own Spider-Verse universe (with the exception of the Oscar-winning "Into the Spider-Verse"), but only proves in showing how subpar their work is compared to the MCU. Their only decent films so far have been the ones where they've teamed up with the MCU for their Spider-Man trilogy, culminating in "No Way Home," which is one of the highest grossing films of all time. Instead, they're focusing on Spider-Man's "anti-heroes" like Venom and Morbius, and soon Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter as well. The issues with these films are many and varied, but all - so far anyway - share a connection: they're just bland and boring compared to the ever-growing MCU.

Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) has been played with a rare blood disease his whole life, and even though he managed to become a Nobel-prize nominated doctor, can't seem to find a cure for his own disease. He wants to find this cure not just for himself, but his childhood friend Lucien "Milo" (Matt Smith), who managed to acquire his family's wealth growing up, allowing Morbius to have virtually unlimited resources in his quest for a cure. Along with fellow doctor Martine Bancroft (Adria Ariona), he manages to fuse human blood with vampire bat blood, and in doing so curing his ailment - but with a terrifying side-effect. He now thirsts for human blood and becomes weak without it, but along with his cure he acquires superhuman powers like speed, strength, and echolocation. Milo wants the cure himself, but Morbius is wary to do so because of the side effects, but Milo takes it anyway and embraces the darker side of his newfound abilities, killing at will while Morbius uses synthetic blood, but learns that it's slowly not working for him. As he begins to deal with the fact that he might need to kill to survive, he works on a cure to heal both himself and Milo - or kill them both in order to avoid innocent people dying.

"Morbius" was one of the last films to succumb to the COVID plague, having its premiere date moved a total of six times. When the first trailer came out (back in January 2020), I was somewhat excited to see it. Then the date got moved, and I was still excited. Then moved again, and I was...well...sorta excited. Then again, and I groaned. The fifth time, and I shrugged my shoulders. Then the sixth time and I was like, "they're still going to release this?" So as my excitement waned with each delay, my expectations where already low going into it - and somehow it managed to exceed even my lowest expectations. The film was a complete and utter mess, a cavalcade of scenes that were spliced together so haphazardly it didn't make a whole lot of sense, and the story itself was in all honesty nonexistent. There's so many moments in the film where you just accept the fact that they happened for...reasons:
-Morbius is honored with a Nobel prize, but turns it down off-screen for...reasons
-Morbius, after becoming the living vampire, chooses not to kill for...reasons
-Milo manages to steal the serum and we never know if he had the same side effects as Morbius did for...reasons
-Milo has a bloodthursty lust to kill for...reasons
-Despite his picture being flashed all over the television, Morbius can walk through New York City with just his hoodie up to avoid detection for...reasons
-The two FBI agents get the idea to trail Morbius's partner Martine but doesn't seem to actually do so for...reasons

Seriously, there is absolutely no script given to this film, and it's an almost two-hour film where you can't really deduce what the point of it is. Sure, it's to cure Morbius of his ailment, and give him vampire powers, but there's never any depth to any of the characters at all. Morbius is a good guy who doesn't want to kill and wants to do right. Martine wants to help Morbius in his quest. Milo wants the cure so he can go on a bloody rampage. The FBI agents exist merely to serve as the generic cop-stock characters who always show up way after the real action happens and they're left wondering what just happened. It's completely flat-lined, an overly glossed story in favor of bloated, too-dark CGI action.

Jared Leto, to my surprise, actually did well as Morbius - but that's because he didn't have any incentive to step above a caricature of the anti-hero. We know little to nothing about him at the start, and about the same at the end, but only a moment in the film that we never actually see happen (I so want to spoil it, but I won't), and we're left wondering why that thing never happened. Matt "Doctor Who" Smith plays Milo with the gleeful intensity that's borderline moronic, as he does his best "Joker" impression by dancing around the screen during his kills - and he ain't no Joaquin Phoenix. Adria Ariona has very little to do than be Morbius's love interest, while Jared Harris is the doctor for Morbius and Milo during childhood to their adult years and has nothing else to do, while Tyrese Gibson and Al "Mirabel" Madrigal (alright, he's not "Mirabel," but I can't help but laugh at his last name) are, essentially, the bumbling moronic FBI agents who chase Morbius around New York City. No one has any character development, no depth, and no essence of being. Again, flat-lined.

Another issue that Sony has had repeatedly with their Spider-Verse villain universe: you can't fully explore an anti-hero with a PG-13 rating. "Venom" far out-performed expectations, but was neutered with a PG-13 rating (as everyone knows, Venom loves to bite heads off bad guys, but we never see that). "Venom: Let There be Carnage" was even more neutered with its PG-13 rating, since now it wasn't just Venom, but Carnage - easily one of Marvel's most violent villains - were hampered by the rating, resulting in way-too-dark fight scenes and overuse of CGI that made it look like a ping-pong event happening on screen. "Morbius" struggles the most with the PG-13 rating, because vampire movies are meant to be bloody and violent (the fellow Marvel product "Blade" movies made full use of their R rating), but the majority of the violence here occurs off-screen or in rapid successive camera cuts where you don't really know what's happening. When it comes to the Morbius/Milo showdowns, these scenes are even worse as they almost teleport from scene to scene, with only a few moments of slow-motion shots to let the audience know that they're not having a collective stroke.

The Score: C-