Morbius Review

Morbius is the third entry in Sony’s Spider-man Universe. This time the studio brings the living vampire to the big screen with Jared Leto in the title role.

Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) is a genius haematologist who has a rare blood condition that requires three blood transfusions a day to live. In an attempt to find a cure Morbius experiments on vampire bats and believes he has found one. However, the serum Morbius has created has side effects because he gains superhero powers and a thirst for human blood.

Sony is keen to make the SPUMC work. They want to profit off the Spider-man property without the need to partner with Marvel Studios. The Venom films were financial successes, but the critical reception was tepid, to put it mildly. The critical reaction to Morbius was scathing, yet it was made on a $75 million budget which is modest for a superhero film.

Morbius has had its release date postponed a few times. It was set to be released in October 2021 and January this year. The second postponement was due to the success of Spider-man: No Way Home and Sony was hoping Morbius could ride on that film’s coattails. Trailers for Morbius even highlighted it was from the studio that brought us Spider-man: No Way Home. But the Tom Holland Spider-man movies benefited from their connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Marvel Studio doing the creative heavy lifting.

Morbius’ creative team didn’t inspire confidence. It was directed by Daniel Espinosa, someone who had an unremarkable career, and it was written by the pair that gave us Dracula Untold, The Last Witch Hunter, and Gods of Egypt. Morbius had the standard superhero origins where the main character gets their powers, practices with his power, and then faces a villain with similar powers. Structurally Morbius was a lot like Venom because they both showed science run amok, the main characters having to control the monster within them and because they were both set in the same universe had a similar look. Morbius does repeat some of the same mistakes as the Venom films, the big one being an overreliance on CGI which led to weightless and incomprehensible action sequences.

The big difference between Morbius and Venom was the tone. The Venom movies were more like wacky buddy comedies as Eddie Brock had to deal with the symboite that he had to share a body with. Morbius was a more seriously toned film, some people could see it as po-faced. Morbius’ monster was internal: if he goes without blood he turned into a feral beast.

Morbius was similar to Blade because they had the strengths of the vampire, none of the weaknesses but both suffered from the hunger for blood. However, this comparison led me to think I would rather watch one of the Blade films.

Morbius has quickly garnered a reputation as one of the worst Marvel movies. It has a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.2 on IMDB at the time of publication. There is even a meme going around with the Predator handshake saying Jared Leto was in both the worst Marvel and DC films. This criticism was on the harsh side. Morbius at least had a coherent story with a solid frame because it was about two friends with a terminal illness looking for a cure and were willing to take desperate action to achieve this. The friends ended up having a moral split after they received their cure.

Where Morbius failed was the execution. It was lacking in a compelling story and characters. But it didn’t suffer from issues afflicting other weak Marvel films, like a rushed production (X-Men: The Last Stand), executive interference (Spider-man 3), or tonally misjudged (2015’s Fantastic Four).

In recent years Jared Leto has been lambasted by critics and audiences. This isn’t undeserved because of his antics when making Suicide Squad and his dreadful performance in House of Gucci. There was an improvement with his role as Michael Mobius because he was a lot more restrained and likeable. However, Leto was outshone by Matt Smith who was having a blast as the villain. Smith played his character like he got the role of The Master instead of The Doctor because he was a character who ended up having a lust for life. Like the Doctor, Smith’s Milo got to do a lot of speech making and pontificating when he turned into a living vampire. Although Smith was the most English Greek man you will ever see.

Mobius does twist the vampire mythos by being more scientific. Mobius was half-man, half-vampire bat so he had abilities like super strength and flight but not vulnerable to sunlight, silver, or holy items. I would love to see a film explore this more.

On a final note, one of the major set pieces was set in the New York subway. When watching it I was distracted because the scene was clearly shot on the London Underground and not in North America. Despite the production designers putting up some New York Subway maps in the location, there was no masking of the London Underground’s distinctive architecture.

Mobius was not the worst comic book film like some critics and audiences have tried to make it out to be. It was just a bland and mediocre superhero film that will be quickly forgotten.