MORBIUS by Urizon

 

  Oh lord…I wasn’t going to talk about Morbius. It honestly wasn’t even worth talking about. I’m currently working on trying to beat Ghostwire Tokyo so I can write about that, so I was trying to save my energy. Unfortunately, enough people have asked me my opinion on this movie, and I have explained my thoughts on it enough times, that talking about it is now easy. So, I suppose there isn’t much excuse for me not to do it. I am going to say, this will have some slight spoilers for the ending of Spider-Man No Way Home as well as Morbius. So here is your warning on that. Now, let’s get into this.

   Morbius stars Jared Leto as the titular Michael Morbius, a doctor with a blood illness. What that illness is? Couldn’t tell you. Michael was raised in a private hospital as a child. At some point during that time, he met a new child there named Lucien, who also had the same disease. Michael insists that this child’s name is no longer Lucien, but is now Milo.  Apparently, this is nothing new for him as he has dubbed every child who stayed in that bed Milo. Why is this? I dunno. Never is brought up. Seeing a theme?

   Flash forward, Michael, who has vowed to cure the disease that he and Milo share, is now a doctor who is famous for his work in creating a synthetic blood. There isn’t much time wasted as we find out that he is secretly working on splicing the genes of vampire bats with his own to cure the disease that is destroying his body. There is a love interest, who he works with and who helps him, named Martine. I had to look up her name because despite her being in the movie so much and her name being mentioned constantly, if she were removed from the equation, I doubt anything would change. Always a good sign of a movie when the singular female character is irrelevant.

   Anyway, Michael meets with Milo (Matt Smith), and tells him of his illegal cure idea. Big shock though, this cure ends up turning Michael into a living vampire. This splicing of genes has now given him extraordinary powers and cured his illness. The catch is, he must consume blood or else he will go into blood rages from the hunger and his illness comes back with a vengeance. Thankfully Michael has made synthetic blood! Unfortunately, that is working less and less though and he finds himself desiring the real stuff. Milo then gets angry that Michael won’t do the same for him, ultimately stealing the cure and becoming a monster himself, one who won’t hesitate feasting on others. This upsets Michael, who doesn’t want to kill anyone. Now the two brothers are at odds, as Milo just wants to feed and be free now that he is cured while Michael tries to stop him. Can Michael do what needs to be done to stop his former friend?

   I wanted to love this movie. The odds were against it from the very beginning, but I truly thought the trailers for it looked really good! I thought for sure that Sony had learned a lesson and would be releasing a quality movie. Especially since this movie got delayed several times, originally scheduled to be released 2 years ago. There was plenty of time to fix things. It is truly unfortunate how much of a mess this movie is. Like, I don’t think it is nearly the dumpster fire that people are making it out to be. In fact, there are actually quite a few things I enjoyed. Maybe that is why it is so frustrating. There is so much potential. I so badly wanted this movie to be good, and instead it is just okay.

   I’m going to go through and quickly say what I do like. Little bit easier to get that out of the way. Morbius’ powers are really interesting and cool to look at most of the time. When he first discovers he has them and is going through a montage while trying them out, it is really cool. I find it really interesting, especially the visual depiction of his echolocation.

   On a similar note, the visuals can be pretty good. Not all of the time, but I think some of the effects honestly look good. Morbius’ appearance looks pretty spot on from the comics and it was pleasantly surprising how good of a job they did…most of the time. There are other times where honestly things do look a bit rough. More on that later though.

   Main other thing I liked, and honestly it was the thing I loved most of all in this movie was Matt Smith. My God, did he carry this film. Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoyed Leto’s acting for the most part. I think that there were some moments that probably were supposed to be emotional that ended up a bit lifeless, but as a whole, I enjoyed his performance. Matt Smith on the other hand was enjoyable from start to finish. He could be intimidating yet likeable. He could be goofy and fun while seeming to have the time of his life. I haven’t seen him in much honestly, just Doctor Who and a few films, but I have always enjoyed his performances. This continues that trend and I am so happy about it. This movie probably would not have been as bearable if it weren’t for him.

   So yeah, that’s really all the positive things I can think of to say. So the negatives are next. Oh boy the negatives…

   Let’s just start with countering the positives I said. The action and powers were cool sometimes, but for big battles, it was just a jumbled mess. Sometimes you couldn’t even really tell what was happening. The slow motion used was alright, but could be a little overdone and showed a bit more of the rougher elements. This just leads to the effects not always looking so hot. I try not judge CGI. I can ignore it being bad if the story is good; unfortunately, that was not the case. It really, really showed during the end credit scene. Finally, as I said, the acting for Leto could really have used some more emotion at times.

   That was quick and painless…. well…quick at least. But now for the other complaints.

  My God, this plot was a complete mess. So much stuff just made no sense. Why call Lucien Milo? What is this disease? How did Michael figure out his powers so quickly? Things moved so quickly and covered nothing. Plot points that seemed like they were going somewhere ultimately went nowhere. I truly feel that this movie was going to be maybe 30 minutes longer, but had things cut for some reason. I am glad to see movies that aren’t nearly 3 hours long. That being said, why does Sony insist on cutting their super hero movies so short? Morbius could have used more time. Both Venom movies needed to be longer. I can’t help but wonder if it is just how they operate. If so, they should stop.

   I need to actually circle back around a little to the Milo thing. So, when Matt Smith was cast originally in this movie as comic book villain Loxias Crown. Matt Smith thought he would be playing Loxias Crown. Everyone thought the villain of this movie was Loxias Crown…yet somehow during production it was decided to have him be an original character named Lucien. Lucien then gets named Milo in the film for some reason. None of this makes sense! I guess they wanted to have a character more similar to Michael. If that was the case, why not just change Loxias Crown to be more similar to Morbius? It isn’t like they have been completely accurate for any other Sony Marvel movie. I just don’t get it. Why change his character from Loxias to Lucien, just to have him get dubbed Milo with no explanation? Just name him Milo then! This frustrates me so much!

   Speaking of frustrating…this movie wastes like half of its cast. Adria Arjona played Martine Bancroft. She was a doctor and love interest to Morbius. As I looked her up, I see she took inspiration from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for this role. I wish it showed. They do nothing with her. She is a pointless love interest who tries to have a moment but ends up falling into the cliché love interest who just sits there going “Michael stop. This isn’t you, Michael.” Her role is ultimately pointless and she contributes nothing. In a situation maybe just as bad are the two detectives played by Al Madrigal and Tyrese Gibson. They literally are there just to chase Michael around and accomplish nothing. Apparently, Tyrese's character is a character in the comics and he signed a multiple picture deal when signing up, but I don’t see why. You find out that synthetic blood saved his arm or something, but that’s it. Their story goes no where. At least they were just a little more memorable.

   Now to the ending and into the end credits. So…spoilers. This movie ends very abruptly. It felt like a huge portion was cut, and I truly believe it was judging by the end credits and trailer. So, in the trailer, there are multiple references to various Spider-Man universes, making people unsure which one this took place in. It was a major topic of discussion and one that made many people more interested in the film. We saw references to Amazing Spider-Man, the Tobey suit from the Raimi trilogy, shutouts to Venom, Adrian Toomes from the MCU Spider-Man films and even mentioning the MCU Spider-Man being a murderer. All of this is cut from the main movie. We get a Venom reference, but that’s it. You never see the scene with Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes, we never see the Spider-man murderer graffiti. It is all scrubbed from the film. I don’t know what they were thinking with this. I know it angered so many people, and I can’t say that I blame them.

   Now in the end credits, that changes a little. We see the tears in the sky from the end of Spider-Man No Way Home. Suddenly Adrian Toomes is no longer in prison in the MCU but is now in the Morbius universe. He really doesn’t seem to bothered by the whole thing for some reason. They let him out because they have no idea why he is there or really who he is. Scene number 2, he meets up with Morbius at 3 AM saying that he has no idea how he got there but he thinks Spider-Man is involved and wants to get a team together which Morbius is intrigued by.

   First, the CGI for the Vulture costume Adrian wears in the second scene is awful. He sounds like he recorded the lines at home and they just dubbed over it. I feel like this was a resort done fairly recently. Maybe they couldn’t get him there due to Covid. I don’t know. It was awful. How did he even get his suit? Did he build it that quickly? Steal from a version of Vulture in that universe. It makes no sense! Plus, that line of “I think it has something to do with Spider-Man.” Why? What reason could you possibly think that?

   Speaking of not making sense, the rift in No Way Home sent everyone back to their own universe when closed. No one got sent from that universe to others. Why in the world would Toomes end up in this universe? I have no explanation for this. The director has talked about this scene before the movie even released for some reason, yet I have seen no real reason as to how it is even possible. Then, Morbius has been trying not to kill or hurt others; why would he suddenly agree to this?  Sony wants their Sinister Six movie and they apparently are going to do their best to get it, even if it makes no sense at all.

  Morbius isn’t the worst movie ever. It has some enjoyable moments and quite a bit of potential there. Unfortunately, it is brought down by having such a messy, incoherent ploy that can’t seem to figure out what it is doing. It insults not only some of the characters but the audience itself. I hope that we get to see more of the character, I also hope we somehow get to see more of Matt Smith, but I’m not expecting much. It is really such a shame that this had to be the character’s first solo outing. Maybe I’ll be wrong. The only thing I know for sure is, with a Kraven the Hunter and a Madam Web movie in the works, Sony needs to think about changing their tune before they drain all of the life from this franchise like they did this movie.