Morbius

The internet is a funny place. 

People took this movie and pretended it was the height of cinema as a joke on pretentious film lovers. And then the joke went so far that Sony actually thought they had something and rereleased it only for it to bomb twice. 

“It’s Morbin Time!” indeed. 

The short version is that Dr. Michael Morbius has a rare blood disease and finds a cure for it. And because this is a superhero movie his cure mixes his DNA with a vampire bat and turns him into a kind of vampire. 

He becomes Morbius The Living Vampire! 

And in Spider-man comic books he’s a fun, tragic, villian. His origin is essentially the same as The Lizard and a host of other Spider-Man villains who are mostly a collection of smart guys who turn into monsters because their science failed them. 

Spidey is usually friendly with these guys when they aren’t corrupted which adds to the trademark Stan Lee drama when he has to fight them.

“How can I stop this man, my mentor/friend/boss’s son?”

“But I must, I will, for if I fail hundreds/thousands/millions will die!”

Anyway, that’s what it looks like on the page. And then there’s usually a great splash page from Smiling Steve Ditko or Jazzy John Romita. 

Sony’s decision to create a Spidey cinematic universe means we get movies like this and Venom for villain characters who should not be getting movies on their own. 

That said, this isn’t a terrible movie. It’s for sure not a great movie. But it mostly goes through the motions and does a decent job in the action scenes.

I enjoyed Morbius figuring out how to fly by jumping in front of a subway train. And the fight scenes were mostly fine. 

Matt Smith and Jared Leto are having fun as the hero and villain of the piece. Jared Harris is wasted in a role that gives him almost nothing to do and he looks like he wants to be somewhere else.

It’s all perfectly average superhero nonsense. 

The two end credit scenes at the end are hot garbage and obvious corporate mandates that make no sense and hurt everything that came before. I love superhero movies, I love the connecting end credit scenes that the MCU started. But I was honestly offended by these scenes. 

If Sony wants to bank on its intellectual property this bad why don’t they just do Miles Morales or Spider-Gwen? Or all the other Spider heroes? Who thought a series of villian movies was a good idea? 

On second thought, if spider heroes are all gonna be done with this level of quality maybe I should shut up. I don’t want Sony getting any ideas.