Thursday 31 March 2022

Morbius (Movie Review)


Coming fresh off of the success it had gotten with Spider-Man: No Way Home last Christmas, all eyes are on Sony and the third film in their villain-centric Spider-Man Universe, Morbius. This is after several delays that saw the film get moved out of its original 2020 release date, all the way to April 1st, 2022. And as trailers continued to sell us on the film's connections to Spider-Man and the other villains in his rogue's gallery, so also did our interest continue to grow. But like a cruel April Fool joke that nobody saw coming, the movie finally arrives to show us that things are not quite what they seem.

The film stars Jared Leto as Michael Morbius, a doctor who was born with a rare blood disorder. In his quest to find a cure for his illness, he begins to conduct experiments with a peculiar breed of bats he believes have the enzyme needed to reverse his condition. But the experiment ends up also giving him some of their other vampire-like qualities, including their insatiable thirst for human blood. Now Morbius must wrestle against becoming the monster people already see him as, before he ends up hurting those who are dearest to him.

On the surface, Morbius looks like a film with lots of potential. We have a fairly popular antihero from the Spider-Man comic books being played by a more-than-capable Jared Leto. We also have the promise of connections to the larger Sony Spider-Man Universe. Most importantly though, we have an origin story that looked like it would deliver both the heart and thrills we've all come to expect from these comic book movies.

And sure enough, the movie starts off with all of the aforementioned promises intact. But it doesn't take very long before the whole thing quickly loses its way with an incoherence that needs to be seen to be believed. Everything from the dialogue, to the one-dimensional characters reeks of a script that needed more than a few more passes in the writing room.

The one area where the film could have scored any kind of redemption points is in its action scenes and even those are marred with a CGI-heavy style that seems ripped straight out of the mid-2000s. It is difficult to tell what is happening at any given moment and most times you just want the whole thing to stop before you develop a headache trying to decipher any of it.

But the movie's biggest offense in my opinion is its utter failure to live up to expectations. The film was heavily marketed as a part of the larger Sony Spider-Man Universe. But any connection it has with the recent Spider-Man films is tenuous at best. In fact, many of the scenes and connections shown in the trailers are nowhere to be seen in the actual movie, in what is probably the most egregious case of false advertising I have seen in recent memory.

It is not all doom and gloom though, as the film did have one or two areas that managed to shine through the murk. First there is Jared Leto as Morbius, whose performance was heartfelt and restrained. Then there was the opening bit like I said, which looked like it should've led into a far better movie than the one we got. Except none of that is enough to save what is essentially another movie more concerned with building an interconnected universe than actually telling a coherent story.

To say that Morbius is a barely comprehensible mess would be putting it lightly. It is, quite simply, one of the worst comic book movies to grace cinema screens since Vin Diesel's Bloodshot. Anyone planning to catch the film on the big screen is advised to do so with heaps of garlic and holy water in tow. And even then, you'll be hard pressed to glean any kind of enjoyment out of its 1 hour and 44 minutes, other than perhaps chuckling at just how bad the whole thing ends up becoming.

11 comments:

  1. I saw the reviews were not good. Thanks for the warning, we will not be seeing this one tonight.

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    1. You're welcome. It is definitely still worth checking out whenever it finds its way onto one of the streamers though.

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  2. Bumping it almost 2 years might have made it hard for them to work with the current Spider-Man and Venom movies. It was never really high on my list of things to watch though as I haven't really read much of the character except a few appearances in Spider-Man comics.

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    1. Yeah. The timeline probably lined up differently then they originally envisioned. I suspect some heavy changes might have been made since the film was first slated to release as well. At least going by its deviations from the trailers.

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  3. It’s kind of funny how the reviews are using in this. I think it’s mostly a case of misguided expectations. I mean, did people really expect a masterpiece? It looks to be about Blade level to me, and at least for two films that was perfectly acceptable, in the pre-MCU days.

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    1. (That first sentence is not what I wrote. That is what autocorrect wrote. And I didn’t catch before posting…)

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    2. Lol. Blade was actually great though. This just feels choppy and less exciting in comparison.

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    3. Last year (maybe the year before?) I watched through the Blade trilogy. I would say at its best it was entertaining. I would not call any of it great.

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    4. And that's all we expect from such films to be honest... to be entertained. 😁😇

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  5. Morbius is an incredible movie that will have you on the edge of your seat. The story, characters, and special effects are all top-notch, and the pacing is perfect. nordvpn 6 month deal The performances by Jared Leto and Michael Keaton are especially captivating, and the action sequences are thrilling. Morbius is an exciting and engaging movie that will leave you wanting more. Highly recommended.

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