'Morbius' Review: D-tier Spider-Man Character Gets a D-tier Movie
PG-13: Some frightening images, intense sequences of violence, brief strong language
Runtime: 1 Hr and 44 Minutes
Production Companies: Marvel Entertainment, Arad Productions, Matt Tolmach Productions
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Directors: Daniel Espinosa
Writers: Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless
Cast: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, Tyrese Gibson
Release Date: April 1, 2022
In Theaters Only
Last week, Sony played games with my ass. My editor extraordinaire Myan and I went to my press screening of Morbius, which was originally located on the Upper West Side of NYC. When I got to the theater, nobody was there. No Sony reps, no table, no fellow critics… nothing. Myan, Eric Kohn of Indiewire, and I showed up but weren't given the information that they’d changed venues. So, we ended up not seeing it… until now. Sony thought they were being slick by not letting lil ol’ Rendy see their D-tier movie based on a D-tier Spider-Man character. Well, think again! In hindsight, I feel like they did me a favor because this movie was a waste of my time.
Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder and determined to save others suffering the same fate, Dr. Morbius attempts a desperate gamble. While at first, it seems to be a radical success, the darkness inside him is unleashed. Will good override evil, or will Morbius succumb to his mysterious new urges?
The only visual component that put a tiny glimmer in my eye was seeing Morbius’ echolocation abilities function. During the overview shots of NYC, you see color seep off the sides of the buildings that look like watercolor brush strokes. I thought that was creative, or… dare I say, “cool.”
From the release of the first teaser trailer way back in 2020 (or, better yet, the announcement of the Morbius movie itself, everyone saw this as a hollow and desperate attempt for Sony to retain anything Spider-Man-related since they got joint custody with Disney’s MCU. Nobody asked for this, but we got it anyway. You know the saying, “What you see is what you get?” Well, Sony made sure you got NOTHING.
Per the norm of every comic book movie, Morbius is an origin story that recycles the blueprint of every other comic book movie made within the past two decades. Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) is a paraplegic Nobel Prize-winning biologist who turns himself into a living vampire to cure himself of a rare disease that plagues him and his orphan best friend Milo (Matt Smith). You know how shit goes down: Morbius feels cursed by his new condition, Milo somehow also curses himself the same way, the two must fight because Milo is now a vampire but can control it and becomes a menace for no reason… Blah, blah, blah. Who cares? We’ve seen this shit so many times before and it’s not even fun to watch.
Director Daniel Espinosa takes a frustratingly serious approach to this derivative narrative, which could’ve been functional if it was as campy as Venom. If not that, given Espinosa's background, if it delved further into the horror elements in an R-rated fashion similar to his Alien clone, Life—which I remember enjoying––Morbius would’ve had some sort of an identity to call its own. But Sony doesn't have the heart to explore outside the box. As a result, you got two or three scenes of horror that are poorly stitched together and feature little to no bloodshed to retain the PG-13 rating. You get off-screen kills or laughable death scenes where people get viciously mauled, yet no blood is seen. So, the film even fails as a serviceable horror flick.
Then, you have the cast giving either their very worst or trying way too hard for a screenplay that gives them nothing to work with. Fuck, man… if only we lived in a timeline where Hollywood cast a trans woman for Leto’s role in Dallas Buyers Club, preventing him from being dubbed an Academy Award winner in the process, literally anyone else would’ve been in this role. As he is in most roles, Jared Leto is abysmally terrible as Michael Morbius. He sleepwalks while being so straight-laced and gloomy, for he adds nothing to elevate this already uninteresting, dull lead as an anti-hero to root for.
If anything, Matt Smith, who portrays his best friend turned foe, runs circles around him and just about everyone else in the ensemble. Smith is so lively and campy, for he feels as if he's stripped right out of a Venom movie. Milo is bafflingly rushed and confusing to follow considering that he’s evil for no reason and his perspective on being a vampire is more engaging than Morbius’ because he’s having fun with it. But their conflict is so forced that it becomes egregiously nonsensical. If you think about it too hard, you’ll lose more brain cells than this movie had already stolen from you watching it.
For a character described as “the living vampire,” this shit ain’t got soul. Not the character, the actor portraying him, or the redundant ass story. It’s hard to roast a movie that leaves you feeling nothing and gives you nothing to work with. I saw a tweet that said, “This is the best superhero movie of 2003,” and now I’m becoming defensive over Daredevil because that had a personality that was a perfect product of its time. This is corporate schlock that makes you question your existence, the plague that superhero movies have caused for the film industry, and the creation of the MCU in the first place.
Two years of release date delays and $70 million down the drain for this?! I blame Kevin Feige for all this because we wouldn’t have all these copycats trying to replicate his success if it wasn't for him. DC learned their lesson and is taking risks while Sony is out here doing the same old shit by making mockbusters superhero movies Asylum-style, but the sad part is that it still has the Marvel brand to some capacity. Not even an iota of effort was put into this movie and Sony had the gall to keep this under wraps for two years, releasing various films as VODs or selling their entire animation slate for 2021 to streaming services instead of giving them their time in the sun to maximize their profits. This is what we’ve been waiting for since 2020? Y’all are proud of this? Must be some type of happy accident for you to finally release this on April 1st because this movie’s existence is a joke.
