Morbius (2022)
Third in the so-called 'Sony Cinematic Universe' alongside the two movies starring Venom, this movie is Sony's attempt to capitalize on Spider-Man's rich supporting cast and create movies of their own unconnected to the MCU.
And... Morbius itself is... a relatively simple movie. It accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to adapt Spider-Man's sometimes-enemy sometimes-tragic-ally, the sci-fi vampire Michael Morbius, the Living Vampire, into a superhero movie that seems to be more of a spoof of monster movies or horror movies. And there are a lot of relatively well-executed scenes along these lines, particularly in the first half of the movie. It's just that the movie itself runs for probably half an hour a bit too long, and it doesn't quite have the comedic factor of Venom for me to really get all that invested, especially in the second half of the movie.
The setup parts of this movie is... it's decent. Morbius himself doesn't really have too much of a diverse supporting cast that Spider-Man or even Venom can call upon, and the main villain of this movie, Milo, really... isn't all that interesting. He's set up as Morbius's childhood friend and adoptive brother from the facility that they are admitted in for the rare, non-specific blood disorder that they have. Eventually in his adulthood, Michael Morbius becomes a super-awesome scientist at a ridiculously young age, and ends up looking for options in curing his and Milo's disease by experimenting with bats.
And it really does feel like some sort of old-school B-movie horror flick made on a big budget. We've got the local guides afraid to bring Morbius to the lair of a certain species of apparently super-aggressive vampire bats, we get Morbius experimenting on handwaved comic-book science... hell, I actually even enjoyed myself a lot when Morbius let loose and massacred those mercenaries (who were only doing their jobs and doesn't seem to be evil people!) on the boat. Morbius's determination to fight fate, and eventually to try and figure out how to control his monstrous condition... that's not a story that could carry the amount of time that they saddled it with, but Jared Leto's performance is well-done enough.
It's just that the movie itself takes itself way too seriously, and, unfortunately, none of the side-cast are really all that interesting. Morbius's romantic interest and scientific partner Marine Bancroft feels more like a character to exchange exposition with. There's a sub-plot starring FBI agents Simon Stroud and Rodriguez, but their storyline really went nowhere -- at least there was some sort of resolution with their counterparts in Let There Be Carnage, and there were hints from people who analyze the trailers that there was a subplot with Stroud getting a mechanical arm that was cut? And Morbius's adoptive father Nicholas was kind of a non-entity that when he comes back to die at the end it really doesn't feel like it delivered the impact that the movie thought it would.
Which brings us to the main two characters -- Morbius and his adoptive brother Milo. Leto tries his best, and clearly put in a lot of effort into trying to depict Morbius's frantic obsession with trying to cure his disease, and later on on his horrified realization that he's turned into a monster. It's just that... that 'tragic hero' story is kind of something we've all seen before. Which, while adequate to carry a movie, perhaps, I don't really think that the overall movie really ever rises above 'adequate' for ol' Morb himself.
And... meme dances aside, main antagonist Milo himself does have an okay motivation. He refuses to be beholden to his disease anymore and wants to break free and indulge in his feral impulses. And the childhood showcases of how he got bullied for his disease does lead some credence how his "we are the few against the many" creed got warped from something meant to be an encouragement between two sick boys into a 'humans-are-worthless' spiel. In Milo's case it's kind of boggling because, like many other reviewers have also pointed out, the movie actually laid the groundwork for Milo's turn to villainy... but none of it is ever brought up when Milo does actually become evil, and the character is just a bag of hammy acting on Matt Smith's part. It doesn't really help either that the movie itself is so serious, and none of the scene we spend with present-day Milo really built him up more beyond a pretty basic villain. Matt Smith does try his best to bring in some funky energy to the movie, but the fact that the rest of the movie is so dour ends up making him feel out of place.
And I'm really not sure. A chunk of the movie really deals with the origin story, and while it is formulaic, it is the part of the movie that I felt I enjoyed the most out of. There definitely could be ways to make it a bit more horror-based, I suppose, which definitely would've set this movie apart a bit more beyond having a vampire superhero. But the second half, when it's just Morbius escaping from FBI agents and later fighting against Milo? Nevermind the fact that the Nightcrawler-esque smoke effect from Morbius's super vampire speed looks absolutely goofy when it's orange smoke he's trailing with his prison outfits, the second half of the movie really does feel like it's twiddling its thumbs. I feel like there really could've been a much more interesting way to set it up, to make the revelation of Milo's identity as the second vampire killing people a bit more of a surprise. Perhaps by actually making it ambiguous on whether Morbius did the murder of that one nurse?
The climax is also something that was pretty bland for me. A lot of these superheroes admittedly do rely a lot on CGI fights for the climax movies (and it's something that plagues the MCU and DC movies as well) but I really did feel like the final fight was pretty... bland. Sure, we get the bonus of Morbius having purple smoke this time around thanks to the colour of his suit, and a giant swarm of CGI bats... but I don't know. I guess Milo just doesn't really work as a villain for me.
I don't know. A lot of times, the critics who hate the genre like to bitch about how the "superhero movie machine" keeps churning out a "formula" despite most of the offerings by Marvel and DC tending to have some merit to their own. Despite really trying to break free with its admittedly more unique premise, Morbius ends up feeling a fair bit too formulaic. Suffering from a very basic plot and extremely forgettable supporting cast, this movie ends up trying too hard to just be a setup for Sony's future endeavours (Bancroft becomes a vampire at the end; there's the much-reviled shoehorned MCU Vulture that doesn't get a good explanation). There's sadly not much meat left at the end of things. It's not terrible, it's pretty solid... but it's really bereft of anything beyond that.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- The events of Venom is noted by one of the FBI agents briefly as something in San Francisco, whereas Morbius himself scares off a thug with "I... am Venom."
- The mid-credits and post-credits scene show the multiversal rifts from Spider-Man: No Way Home appearing in the sky, and somehow causing Adrian Toomes/Vulture from the MCU, played by Michael Keaton, to show up in the prison. He later shows up in full Vulture regalia recruiting Morbius for some sort of team.
- The Daily Bugle newspaper show up a couple of times in the movie. Looking at the smaller headlines on top of them would have references to other Spider-Man characters -- the Rhino, Black Cat and the Chameleon.
- Several advertisements in the movie show a fashion line called "Thomas and Kane", a reference to Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, co-creators of the Morbius character.
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