by Aero S.
Morbius, the newest project in the Sony-Marvel cinematic universe, is very bad. Prior to its release, the only people who were genuinely excited about it were the die-hard comic book fans, and even they are upset and disappointed by the movie. In fact, they hate it so much that # MorbiusSweep, a hashtag made to sarcastically celebrate a film that seemingly has laughably low attendance rates, was trending on Twitter for days on end. As someone who has seen every MCU and Sony-Marvel movie save for The Hulk, I can say that for once, maybe these comic book bros aren’t overreacting after all. The entire movie is littered with issues, and I’d like to touch on as many of them as I can recall from my (terrible, horrible, no good, very bad) theatergoing experience. Spoilers are up ahead!
The most glaring issue I found with Morbius is, concerningly, Morbius. He’s not very interesting or well-rounded, and he doesn’t have a clear arc throughout the movie. The writers attempted to make Dr. Michael Morbius a narcissistic, no-filter, snarky scientist, not unlike Tony Stark, but all those attempts fell flat and ended up making the character, and in turn, the entire movie, feel empty and devoid of purpose. I got the sense that he was supposed to be some type of anti-hero, but the character development was so vague that I’m not even sure that writing that archetype into his character was even intentional. The movie wants to portray him as an anti-hero burdened by the guilt his actions have brought him, but they write him so inconsistently that no one knows if we should root for him or not. If he truly didn’t want to hurt anyone and felt terribly guilty about having killed people, he would have turned himself in to the police as the opportunity to do so was in front of his face. Instead, he chooses to run away in a fancy car. All of these issues amalgamate into one big, and rare, problem: Morbius, has too much, and also too little, character for the audience to know what to think of him.
In some cases, when the lead of the movie is weak, they are heavily supported by the other characters – unfortunately, even the side characters in this movie offer nothing interesting. Matt Smith’s character Milo was remarkably unmemorable and his motivations were ‘to help Morbius embrace who he really is,’ which makes no sense because all he ever tries to do is kill him after he also becomes a vampire. His turn to evil was sudden and largely unexplained, leaving myself and surely the majority of the audience, scratching our heads at the entirely uncalled-for character shift.
The other main character Martine, played by the lovely Adria Arjona, also didn’t improve the movie. She’s (unsurprisingly) the most hollow of all the main characters, and is merely treated as a blind follower of Morbius’. She’s the quintessential comic book movie female character: someone whose only purpose is to serve the interests of the protagonist and kiss him. There’s a scene in the boat lab in which she tries sticking up for herself against a criminal; I thought that it was corny but refreshing to see a female character do something for herself. However, all of that is counteracted by the way she does everything Morbius asks of her and eventually becomes a damsel who literally calls out in distress and ultimately could not be saved by Morbius. She was a mere extension of Morbius’ character instead of someone who could stand alone, and her character being almost completely subservient to her boss while also being his love interest made the dynamic even more cliché.
Some things can still have compelling stories, even if the characters are insufferable (take Succession for example). This is not one of those things as the story is both too simple and too confusing at the same time. The movie never explains why bat DNA is needed for the treatment or what exactly Morbius and Milo have, and we’re expected to just take all the information served to us at face value and accept it. They do very little world-building, presumably because they expect to make more of these trainwrecks, and leave huge plot holes. They somehow manage to absolutely butcher the standard movie plot of a man with a tragic childhood who has a special gift and grows up to be successful by using that gift to help other people. He then gets superpowers accidentally and has to control them in order not to hurt anyone while maintaining a will-they-won’t-they relationship with a female in his life. They unnecessarily throw in Milo, a character that isn’t even in the comics, to shoehorn more conflict into a movie that had other ways to create tension and raise stakes.
Some people might say, if the characters and the story are bad, that’s fine – the point of an action movie is to see the action. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to Morbius. Other Sony-Marvel properties like Venom catch a lot of flak for being weak in storytelling and character building, but their action scenes are mostly done well enough to warrant people watching them. Morbius, on the other hand, has some of the worst action scenes I’ve ever seen. The effects look terrible, especially when Morbius and Milo go bat-mode and leave a trail of color behind them, and the editors of these scenes used slow-motion way too liberally. Half of these fight scenes are done in slow motion with close-up shots of indistinguishable limbs backed by a disappointing score. They end up being an eyesore instead of the pièce de résistance of the movie.
There is frankly no way to defend this film. The shots are drab, with the signature Marvel Grey infecting almost every single shot of the movie. The one thing that was colorful in this movie was Jared Leto’s prison jumpsuit, which definitely should be a point of concern considering that this movie had a runtime of nearly two hours. Even the post-credit scene for this movie was terrible; I had never been so genuinely annoyed by one of those until I saw the ones for Morbius. Some post-credit scenes reveal too much – some of them reveal too little, but this one revealed something that truly made me roll my eyes. As if it wasn’t obvious enough that Morbius was a setup to gather more Spider-Man villains on the big screen, the movie rubs it in our face by having Michael Keaton’s Vulture appear in the Sonyverse and meeting up with Morbius in a field.
Despite the weak story, underdeveloped characters, bad acting, and even worse action, the worst thing to come out of this movie is the fact that Jared Leto has, and is probably guaranteed to continue having, a job. He has revealed the ‘method’ acting techniques he uses, which theoretically should allow him to deliver a better performance, but he somehow manages to do such a terrible job each time. The methods he uses are, at best, disruptive to the set at best, like taking 45- minute bathroom breaks, and borderline criminal at worst, like when he sent used condoms to his Suicide Squad co-stars in order to get into the Joker character. Even though I saw this film through legal means, no one else should, as Sony will only make these movies if they make a lot of money. So, just take my word for it, do not spend money or go out of your way to watch this movie. Be smarter and spend your money to watch other, better movies in theaters right now, like Umma, starring the immensely talented Sandra Oh who, unlike Jared Leto, delivers an authentic, moving performance.
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