Movie: Morbius
Production Companies: Columbia Pictures, Marvel Entertainment, Arad Productions, Matt Tolmach Productions
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Producers: Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, Lucas Foster
Scriptwriters: Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless
Main Cast: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Adjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, Tyrese Gibson
Release Date: April 1st 2022 (US)
Running Time: 104 minutes
Certificate: 15
Introduction
Ah yes, everyone’s new favourite film of the year: Morbius. Whatever your opinion of Marvel and Sony’s latest ‘hit’ film, there are at least some positives to the film like Jared Leto’s and Matt Smith’s performances. And even that’s a push at times with both performances heavily relying on your love of so bad they’re mildly entertaining. But unfortunately the film has been making money at the box office, well done Twitter for making this 100 Morbillion, so we will undoubtedly see another chapter in Sony’s Spiderman Cinematic Universe. SPOILER alert for the review if you actually care about it that much. Oh and yes I’m aware that saying Morbius is bad is the film reviewing equivalent of saying water is wet.. Now, let’s get into the review of the film.
Synopsis
Morbius follows the titular character as Michael Morbius (Leto) transforms from a normal sick human to a healthy but deranged vampire after infecting himself with vampire bats. Naturally, other people bizarrely want a piece of this cure, including Morbius’s adopted brother, Milo (Smith), which leads to Morbius having to fight his brother after he refuses to hand over the cure. Oh, and I think Morbius has a love interest, who worries about his experiment, and does Tyrese Gibson show up at some point? I think he had a metal arm? Anyway, with the hopelessly generic superhero origin movie plot out of the way, here’s some analysis.
Analysis
Editing in Morbius
To begin my analysis of Morbius I’m going to discuss the editing (and at points the lack of it) Take as an example the opening 15 minutes of the film. The film jumps between the present and past about 3 times in 15 minutes. The main problem with this is it creates confusion over when and where any of the events are taking place. So when the film is jumping from the present day to 10 years previously to the present again it’s maddening. How does this affect the audience? Well, to put it mildly it disorientates them horribly. It’s a bit like falling asleep at a party and waking up a few minutes later to find out you’re at a different party somehow with no explanation.
The editing only serves to add to the confusion some of the audience might feel because of a lack of understanding about where the events of a film are taking place especially when a lot of the early film is flashbacks to provide context for a character’s actions in the second and third acts. Another bad side effect of Morbius’s editing is it makes following his journey from reluctant to kill vampire philanthropist to killing when necessary vampire philanthropist difficult to follow. Like all of a sudden in the second act he’s ok with killing when he spent the first act regretting his actions? Makes about as much sense as Tyrese’s arm….
Morbius and the SCU
The next part of my Morbius analysis is how it links up with the rest of the Sony Cinematic Universe (SCU). Note I’m calling it that just for easy referencing or is it a thing? Anyway, the main link between Morbius and the rest of what is becoming the SCU is the mid credits scene. As mentioned above, the mid credits scene sees the Vulture fly over to the SCU where he meets everyone’s favourite vampire philanthropist. While some Marvel fans are complaining about how Vulture showed up with no prior connection other than to set up a potential big showdown with Spiderman in some capacity then let me remind you of Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
In that film’s end credits, Venom appears to set up a ‘showdown’ with Spiderman only for it to never happen. So, this point about Marvel getting lazy with introductions is a bit flawed and it only serves to reinforce how tedious multiverses in films can be. And if the laziness of the cutscene is your biggest concern, then clearly we all need to be a bit more like Vulture and ask why the hell they’re putting together the Sinister Six for a film that might never happen…..
Morbius and Milo in Morbius
For the final part of my Morbius analysis, I’m going to discuss the performances of the two vampires: Jared Leto and Matt Smith as Morbius and Milo respectively. So, let’s start with Matt Smith’s performance as Milo. Considering how long Smith held off joining a superhero franchise, this performance as Milo was as good as he could manage from a shocking script. While the performance of Milo is fine, the performance had plenty of unfulfilled potential because of how the script used Milo.
However, you can’t spell unfulfilled potential, if we could call it that, without Jared Leto’s character in Morbius having a lot of unfulfilled potential. Man, that was a wordy segue….. Anyway, the script manages to give Leto very little to work with yet he still gives a performance of sorts. This potential could have been a nuanced performance about a man struggling with the implications of creating a cure that is also a curse. Instead we got a performance which will be more remembered for the memes encased in a meh film. Honestly if you like Jared Leto and mediocre performances I’d still not recommend putting yourself through this mess. Yep even out of sheer morbid curiosity.
Summary
To summarise Morbius, a horrible film with some alright performances from Leto and Smith that fails to live up to the potential that it never had. But it at least sets up the much teased Sinister Six in both the SCU, if anyone still cares enough about it by the time Kraven the Hunter comes out, so that’s at least a cherry on top of a burnt cake. Honestly, I’d advise watching £10 flush down the toilet because that’d be a better use of it and it might just stop Sony releasing the film again…..
Overall Rating: 2/10 – Very Bad
Target Audience: 15+
Content Warning: Moderate Violence and Gore, Mild Profanity, Mild Alcohol and Drug References, Moderate Frightening Scenes
Recommendation: No
