Review: MORBIUS Could and Should Have Been Much Cooler… And Yet, It’s Not
"This might have been a terrific movie if it was still 2005."
At this point, we’ve probably already gone through the full cycle of wondering “Why make a movie about Morbius?” to “This looks kind of cool,” onto the “Okay, I’ve seen this trailer way too often” phase, before finally arriving at, “Just release the damn movie already!”
That is partially why – and no real fault of Sony, since they couldn’t plan all the ups and downs of this pandemic – Morbius may already be feeling stale and tired even before it finally hits theaters this weekend.
There’s also the obvious hurdle of Dr. Michael Morbius being a perfectly fine Spider-Man supporting character in the comics, a flawed anti-hero, but not one that necessarily deserves or warrants a solo movie vehicle for Jared Leto to play the medical genius with a rare disorder that causes him to drink blood to improve said condition.
Before we learn much about him, we meet Dr. Morbius in Costa Rica, as he is capturing voracious bats for some scientific experiment. We then flashback to his youth as an outcast being treated with another young man with a similar condition, and then back to present day as Morbius is close to solving his problems by combining human and bat blood into a “blue blood” variant that can improve his condition. It also gives him super-strength and other bat-like powers that draws out his instinct to drink the blood of all those around him.
A few notable filmmakers have mentioned that the best way to approach a comic book movie is by not actually looking at it as a “comic book movie,” but rather, transposing the characters into a more proven film genre. In this case, Morbius director Daniel Espinosa (Life) clearly was hoping to make something more like a horror movie, which certainly makes sense for the character. Hence, the results are a lot more Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Cronenberg’s The Fly than it is Dracula, even if it tries hard to throw in clever Easter eggs like naming Morbius’ floating lab the “Murnau” after the German filmmaker who made the earlier silent vampire film, Nosferatu.
This isn’t a terrible vehicle for Leto, who I still think is a pretty decent actor who always tries to make the most out of any character he plays, in this case enhanced by make-up and CG as necessary. It’s just the few times when he tries to put any sort of humor into things (as has become de rigeur for these movies) where things just fall flat, but that’s also because the writing just isn’t up to snuff. Matt Smith isn’t much better as his friend-turned-antagonist Milo, because he just resorts to hamming things up, which seems to be the only way to make a villain interesting any more.
The film repeatedly cuts back to Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal as literally the worst police detectives on the planet trying to investigate dead bodies drained of blood that clearly point to Dr. Morbius. And yet, instead of keeping him locked up, he’s just released. Adria Arjona plays Michael’s collaborator, Dr. Martine Bancroft, but she isn’t given much to do beyond being a typical comic book love interest, while Jared Harris’ mentor (of sorts) mysteriously comes and goes without bringing anything to the story.
Morbius is very much a throwback to the superhero movies released during the first decade of the 21st Century. While there were a few standouts like Spider-Man 2 and X2, there were far more duds. Many of the worst of these – Ang Lee’s Hulk, for example – quickly fell into a formula that Morbius follows almost to a T: A mad scientist experiments on himself, gets powers that leads him into trouble, until he encounters someone far worse and more power-hungry than him who uses the same powers for bad, they fight, etc. etc.
It certainly doesn’t help that Morbius’ friend-turned-arch-villain is named “Milo.” It’s great that bad guys these days don’t feel they need to use silly comic book code-names, but I have a hard time believing the filmmakers couldn’t do better than “Milo.”
The truth is that Morbius probably would have worked far better if it just went for an R-rating. Trying to water down the needed blood splatter to get a PG-13 rating takes away from those horror aspects, which might allow parents to feel better about bringing their younger kids to see it (unlike The Batman) but anyone older than say 15 will likely be bored.
On the positive side of things, the movie generally looks pretty good, but it’s also constantly leaning so hard on its VFX budget to try to make things look cooler than they actually are. They rarely help to make up for the fact that the story and writing aren’t solid enough to bolster them. Something that REALLY bothered me, but probably won’t bother others, is that this movie was obviously filmed a lot in the UK in place of New York. As someone who has spent a lot of time in both places, it bothers me that anyone might think the two places are so interchangeable.
As much as I was hoping to like Morbius more, because it isn’t a terrible movie – believe me, I’ve seen worse this week alone! – it constantly feels like the filmmakers had to work extra hard to make something out of a weak script that brings absolutely nothing new or original to a genre that’s been much improved in recent years. This might have been a terrific movie if it was still 2005, but it’s not, and no one has asked for this kind of throwback to when comic book movies were just so mediocre and forgettable.
Rating: 5.5/10
Note: There are two end credit tags that ham-handedly try to tie Morbius into other recent Sony Spider-movies. At this point, do we really even need a long-threatened Sinister Six movie after Spider-Man: No Way Home? I think not.