Morbius – Movie Review
104 Minutes, Rated PG-13
Written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (Based on the Marvel comic by Roy Thomas)
Directed by Daniel Espinoza
**NOTE: this post will be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, enjoy this brief look at my thoughts. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder and determined to save others suffering his same fate, Dr. Morbius attempts a desperate gamble.
While at first it seems to be a radical success, a darkness inside him is unleashed. Will good override evil – or will Morbius succumb to his mysterious new urges?
Well, I watched Morbius… but I didn’t have this ready at the end of the embargo yesterday because I just wasn’t ready to talk about it.
But now I have to, and while Ryan and I will certainly chat about it in the future (we’ll update this post with that audio; don’t worry), I need to get my thoughts out to you now.
If you’ve been paying any attention to our social media or previous episodes, you’ll know I wasn’t really excited about this one for several reasons, not least of which was Jared Leto, but–
Let’s talk about this, shall we?
Clocking in at a brisk 104 minutes, directed by Daniel Espinoza (who previously directed the terrible sci-fi film Life, with Ryan Reynolds), Sony somehow managed to make me believe that I was going to be a happy camper for at least the first half of the movie.
That half, was kind of a groundwork-laying piece of exposition, where Jared Leto wasn’t trying to do too much. Matt Smith was there, and who doesn’t love Matt Smith, aka Doctor Who? (Although some of his motivations were a little murky as the film went on.)
But then…
But then, Sony kind of reverted to form and really let me down in the third act, during which we have not one, but TWO, living vampires, one of whom is a complete and total ass-bag, the other one is just kind of a pompous egomaniac. I guess they were trying to make Dr Michael Morbius more Dr Stephen Strange-ish in personality: super-dedicated, uber-smart, and still kind of a dick.
And it was kind of working.
But the other living vampire is Matt Smith who is not a doctor, but a childhood friend who suffers from the same condition and just goes bat-shit crazy (pardon the pun) because he’s had a crappy life living with this disease that Michael Morbius has been trying to cure.
And we get to the end, and we are left with a closing scene stinger, then we get to the obligatory, wait-for-the-credits to see what they’ve packed in. We get two credit scenes, both of which feature th enot-spoiler-to-tell-you Michael Keaton as Adrian Toombs.
Both scenes fail to follow any of the establish multiversal logic or just logic-logic between themselves. You read that right, the two scenes don’t seem to track logically between themselves, much less any other bit of information/experience we’ve had before now.
So all of the good-will Sony managed to build up with me in the first half of the film when the third act goes completely off the rails, and we get the obligatory CGI fight, which, BTW, a lot of the CCGI is terrible in those fights.
Now, early on, when Morbius is finding his way through his powers, there are some cool visualizations of what he’s doing, from his “bat-radar” and sensing of the air currents to ride, and that was part of the reason I was okay up to a certain point.
But in the end, all of the positivity that was gleaned from the first part of the film was completely negated–and then some!– by the last act and those credit scenes, which ruined anything else.
And don’t even get me started on the fact that every single bit of music from scenes with the bats, and some of the scenes themselves (the funnel of bats, for one), to be honest, feel torn directly out of Batman Begins.
I’m not just reacting to the fact that bats feature prominently in both characters: it literally feels like segments of score are from Batman Begins. And it’s distracting as hell, only lending credence to the feeling that this movie shouldn’t exist in this form.
I don’t need there to be a Morbius 2; I do not need there to be a Sinister Six spin-off. All Morbius has managed to accomplish is to confirm the lesson Sony should have learned from Venom and Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage, which is that you can’t make a good Spider-Man villain movie without Spider-Man in it.
The you go sports fans. That’s my look at Morbius, from Sony and Columbia pictures.
Morbius opens exclusively in theaters April 1st.
Morbius stars Jared Leto, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Matt Smith, Tyrese Gibson, Charlie Shotwell, and Michael Keaton.
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