In Morbius, Jared Leto leads a coldblooded supervillain origin story
Director Daniel Espinoza stacks vampire clichés with horror classic visuals in a lackluster, but hardly disastrous, Spider-Man spinoff
Film Reviews Jared Leto
No one wants to watch a lousy movie, but an unmitigated disaster can often be more interesting than something that’s just mediocre. Morbius falls into the latter category, a run-of-the-mill origin story that’s capably acted and professionally mounted, but mostly lifeless up on screen—and feels more disappointing after two years of anticipation for its release. Jared Leto delivers an adequately creepy and conflicted take on the eponymous scientist opposite a scenery-chewing Matt Smith as his surrogate brother and sometime adversary, while director Daniel Espinoza (Life) stages the action like his latest project is cosplaying as a series of classic horror movies. The result is a bland, competent, and safe superhero adventure that seems destined to be forgotten before its end credits finish rolling.
Leto (House Of Gucci) plays Dr. Michael Morbius, a scientist who devoted his life and career to curing rare blood diseases after contracting one as a child. Bankrolled by his surrogate brother Lucien (Smith), a rich orphan who was alternately raised and monitored by their shared physician Nicholas (Jared Harris), Morbius takes increasingly risky and ethically questionable chances to alleviate the fatigue and physical disability from which they both suffer. After harvesting the organs of vampire bats in the search for a crucial anti-coagulant, Morbius administers an experimental treatment to himself that restores his health and strength—but not before he succumbs to an inexplicable bloodlust and murders the team of mercenaries shepherding his laboratory through international waters.
When his lab partner Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona) is injured during the excursion, Morbius summons the authorities on her behalf and flees the scene before being apprehended. But while he tries to figure out what to do about his newfound condition, Lucien contacts Morbius and demands his own dosage of the treatment. As two detectives close in on Morbius, seeking answers about his role in a gruesome string of deaths, he races to create a cure for this insatiable appetite. Before long, Morbius finds himself at odds not only with the cops, but with Lucien after his former friend embraces becoming a bloodthirsty, superhuman monster. That makes Morbius more determined than ever to find a cure for the violent and all-consuming affliction from which both he and Lucien suffer, while recognizing that doing so may cost both of them their lives.
Working from a script by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, whose first credit was on Luke Evans’ 2014 vampire film Dracula Untold, Espinoza shuffles through a familiar series of bloodsucker clichés that are frequently joked about but are otherwise reduced to the symptoms of a superhero’s curse, à la the Hulk. It’s hard to remember the last film that treated these fictional creatures with any real dignity. This one is all too happy to exploit their violent and dangerous impulses for set pieces, then undercut the more interesting elements of addiction or biological need to let Morbius, Lucien, and his costars prattle on in increasingly tedious, expository exchanges. Essentially, when it isn’t standing on the shoulders of genre giants to elicit scary moments, Morbius wants to be the Batman Begins of Sony’s supervillain franchise, and it’s unafraid to borrow liberally from its predecessors to evoke the same atmosphere or tone.
Morbius’ first attack on the mercenaries, for example, unfolds like he’s the xenomorph in a better-lit, earthbound version of the Nostromo and/or LV-426, decimating space truckers and automatic-weapon-wielding Marines with swift brutality. A later fight between Morbius and Lucien, meanwhile, conjures the tube chase from An American Werewolf In London, but with less style and more computer-generated imagery. One supposes there are only so many locations that filmmakers can use for action scenes that haven’t already been shot in some iconic fashion, but it takes little imagination to make those cinematic connections while they’re happening. Moreover, Jon Ekstrand’s score functions in precisely the kind of same-y, nondescript way that so much film and TV music seems to these days. The few moments that stand out do so because they sound so similar to Hans Zimmer’s wall-of-sound work on Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, especially when they’re accompanying a scene where, say, a man is looking skyward as a swarm of bats flutter around him in obedience.
While close-ups of Jared Leto’s vibrating ears feel unnecessary, the effect of Morbius’ “radar” as he scans his environment—from his elegantly appointed laboratory to the entirety of Manhattan—actually offers a neat visual, as the buildings dissolve beneath expanding waves of mist. But endlessly transforming faces and colored trails that trace these monsters’ progression across a cityscape quickly grow repetitive, and by the time Morbius and Lucien are hammering each other from one rubble pile to the next, the action becomes an empty placeholder for the hero’s resolution that Espinoza telegraphs. His instincts to try for something semi-tragic, even operatic are admirable, and occasionally work when he slows things down to create a single, tableau-like moment, but the rest of the time the movie ebbs and flows without excitement between dopey character motivations and reams of technical jargon about blood.
If he’s not quite winging it like Tom Hardy is in the Venom franchise, Leto thankfully doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously to prevent a little bit of fun from creeping into the film. But his character’s journey is too obvious, predictable, and oddly impatient to get to its resolution for audiences to care much about whether or not he becomes a superhero or succumbs to his disease. Especially since there’s no particular inclination for Morbius to help ordinary people without the enormous financial resources of Lucien, it’s hard to imagine him doing much of anything for anybody after acquiring his powers and apparently learning how to control them. Smith, on the other hand, seems to relish his chance to turn heel opposite Leto, but he also seems to be well aware that however viewers receive his performance as the film’s bloodsucking super-baddie, his face will be covered more often than not with wildly uneven computer-generated effects.
Without spoiling anything, a couple of post-credits sequences set up a future for Leto’s character in a larger world that you understand why Sony would try and telegraph, but given the failures of past Spider-Man spin-offs (particularly those from the Amazing films) it’s hard to believe they have really thought any of those next steps through. But until then, Morbius feels like exactly the kind of second-tier superhero adventure audiences will accept in between ones that they actively want. Admittedly, it’s odd to want a movie like this to have been worse, but that would mean it failed as bigly as the swings it took; by comparison, Morbius is a walk, or at best a bunt. That may qualify it as a hit for Leto, Espinoza, and Sony, but that doesn’t mean it’s much fun to watch from the stands.
136 Comments
As long as we’re still cursed to constantly have superhero movies I’m glad Sony keeps making these crappy horror adjacent ones. I’m still not doing theaters but I’ll see this one eventually.
I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure I got permanently banned from Twitter for suggesting Blade should kill this corny motherfucker.
Morbius was actually in a deleted ending for the first Blade.
I did not know that.
It’s on the DVD; there’s a mysterious figure on a nearby rooftop when Blade exits Frost’s building. The plan was to use Morbius in Blade 2, but that got scuttled for some reason; you can see the bones of it in the final movie, with Nomak being a genetically altered vampire who may not be completely bad.
Was it ever on a DVD extra or anything, or just a rumor?
It was a DVD extra.
The problem was that when you said corny motherfucker, you meant Leto.
Or is the problem that I said motherfucker at all? Are you allowed to curse on Twitter? I never read the rules. Still don’t know why I’m banned. I’ve appealed a hundred times and no one ever gets back to me. I never got a warning or strike or anything.
Low stakes! Long in the tooth! Bloodless performances! Just plain Vlad! Let the wrong one in! Plot twists that come from far left Renfield! Umm… too much Valium, not enough Allium?
“Here’s the headline, boys: Leto the Right One In”
Crushed like someone under the foot of a 9 foot tall woman?
Don’t Stake Your Sunday Matinee on Morbius!
director Daniel Espinoza (Life) stages the action like his latest project is cosplaying as a series of classic horror moviesWhich should be entirely unsurprising to anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the aforementioned Life.
What a missed opportunity that film was.
“Guys, hear me out: what if we make Alien, except super boring, and also you don’t give a shit about any of the characters.”
I mean it was the best Alien film released that year. But yeah apart from the twist and killing off Ryan Reynolds right off the bat, it was like it existed.
I went to see Life expecting/hoping for a fun sci-fi flick and left so enraged I still get angry when I get reminded this film exists. I hated it so much that I’m record on the Internet saying I’d rather watch Knives Out twice before even considering watching it again (I feel about Knives Out what a significant number of people feel about The Last Jedi which I just think is a mediocre Battlestar Galactica knock-off – specifically the episode 33 – ironically given the history of Battlestar Galactica in relation to Star Wars).
Please explain your feelings about the *magnificent* Knives Out.Or don’t. Whatever. You owe me nothing.
According to his comment, he thinks “Knives Out” is a ripoff of Battlestar Galactica. Which is a hot take if I’ve ever heard one!
Oh, I think that was just bad sentence structure. He thinks *Last Jedi* is a Galactica ripoff.Either way there seems to be a hate boner for Rian Johnson. I don’t love Brick or The Brothers Bloom (both are good but waaaay too twee and self-indulgent) but dude is a good filmmaker.
That was the joke!
D’oh!Stupid internet lack of non-verbal context clues…
Hey, I never said it was a GOOD joke….
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it. Did it have Ryan Reynolds as Ryan Reynolds In Space?
It did, and he’s the first guy to get taken out by the alien, so it’s a pretty good movie.
I liked Life.
I’ll stick with this one.
Seems like this reviewer wanted this film to be Francis Ford’s Dracula or something. Or some even highly revered type of Oscar movie.
The morbius comics of the 90s were great, with ridiculous over the top storylines. I was really hoping they would use those as inspiration.
MCU has the Darkhold and I think most of the Midnight Sons which was a big part of 90s Morbius.
“and feels more disappointing after two years of anticipation for its release.” Serious question, was ANYONE anticipating this one? Like, if by anticipation you mean that people were aware it had been delayed and mildly curious when it would manage to get a full release, sure. But anticipating it? Excited to watch it? I don’t believe it.
I think it’s hard to come up with a good synonym, but I did read a few other reviews who were like “no one was really anticipating it, but we were seeing the trailer for a super long time so that’s the best word to use.”
I think it’s like how you anticipate seeing the dead body of the murder victim in a slasher movie. Not looking forward to seeing it but more just wanting it to show up, scare ya and then be done
Ehhhh, some- myself included- were interested to see how this figures into the larger Sony Spider-Man Universe (or whatever the fuck they’re calling it now)/MCU*, especially since the trailers had all those Easter eggs, but I doubt anyone really was excited considering Morpheus is a C-Lister that only works when against Blade and Leto is a known assbag manchild who’s mEtHoD aCtInG is obviously just an excuse to be weird and get attention. My expectation is this is going to be a box office bomb and Sony will be back to the drawing board. This movie is alot like Black Widow or Eternals, where it would’ve sparked more interest if it came out 5+ years ago, but with Endgame/The Batman/The Suicide Squad/No Way Home all raising the bar, comic book movies have to step their game up.*Although, it’s painfully obvious that Sony doesn’t even know what it’s doing as at this point. They’ve actually managed to beat DC in terms of fucking up a shared universe. Honestly, I don’t see what the big fucking deal is. Either just dump it all into the MCU or have Andrew Garfield in the Sony Universe vs. Venom/Morbius/Kraken/Silver Sable and have Tom Holland in the MCU going against some other dozens of villains in Spider-Man’s rogue gallery. No Way Home was released at the beggining of the worst COVID variant outbreak yet and is still the highest grossing non-ensemble Marvel movie ever, and that’s without a China release! There’s clearly room for more than one Spider-Man.
I’m not opposed to multiple Spideys in movies, but why would you choose Garfield’s Peter Parker as the Sony alternate? He was NOT GOOD. That was not necessarily his fault as those scripts were shit but the Amazing line was ended for a reason. People were happy to see Garfield in No Way Home because it was fan wankery nonsense and they like being pandered to, not because they actually LIKE Garfield as Parker.
I think the fanbase for Garfield’s movies skewed a bit younger, at least that’s the impression I get on social media. They’re even perhaps aware that the movies themselves are messes, but yeah…it’s a nostalgia thing. That’s right, late teens and early 20-somethings can be nostalgic for stuff now too. Goddamn I’m old.
I’m probably mistaken but my impression is that the lack of distance between the iffy Garfield performance and the comparatively solid Holland performance has largely erased Garfield for The Youths.
Garfield was fantastic in “No Way Home” even though his solo outings were absolute crap. It’s clear (if it wasn’t already) that none of that shit was his fault. I’d like to see him back in some capacity if only because his NHW performance was a delight (and he looked like he was having a blast doing it.)
My main problem with his Peter is how melodramatic and emo he is. Now that is a lot down to scripting. If he’s given Whiny Pete dialogue and character notes, that’s what he’ll play. But having seen Garfield in other movies? …. I dunno. He is kinda emo *a lot*. Maybe that’s just the material? Maybe he only gets offered Sadsack Fuckbois?That said, if NWH was an indicator that he CAN be fun if given fun material, maybe it’s not a terrible idea. (And to be fair, I haven’t seen everything he’s done. Maybe I’ve just had the misfortune to only see him in drippy roles.)
As a non-comic book guy the volume of content out there surrounding these characters just seems overwhelming. There are so many MCU films now that I’m not going to bother trying to pull on that thread even if I could find the time for 80 hours of content (forget the TV shows).Which is probably why I enjoyed The Suicide Squad so much. Entertaining as hell and entirely self-contained if you wanted it to be that way.
>They’ve actually managed to beat DC in terms of fucking up a shared universe. One could argue that DC still holds the crown. Nobody gives two shits about second and third tier characters like Venom or Mobius, so these flick faceplanting isn’t a shock. DC, on the other hand, managed to bungle the first meeting of two largest, most famous characters in fiction (not just superhero fiction – but the entirety of human experience).DC fucking that up means the bar is set extra high.
I think that DC botching thier shared universe is the best thing that’s ever happened. I have deep, deep Marvel fatigue and I absolutely loved that I could just go watch The Batman or The Suicide Squad and just enjoy them as single self contained movies, no prior franchise knowledge required. And frankly, they should stick with it. It works and it sets them apart from Marvel.
I wasn’t anticipating this one in particular but I must admit that these days I do actually kind of anticipate any non-MCU superhero movie more than the MCU. Not because I dislike the MCU, but because at this point it’s become such a rigid machine that I feel like it’s effectively unintentionally lowered the stakes of it’s films/projects (aside from your occasional Avengers-level mega-crossover). Like for example, I really liked Spider-Man NWH but since I knew that it’s not an Avengers movie and that Dr. Strange already has a movie announced, neither of them were at risk of dying (Aunt May was kind of a shocker though, gotta admit, if anyone was gonna bite it I had my odds on Maguire).
I was thinking it would be Happy.
I had considered it but like, would anybody care if Happy died? I mean, I guess there would be some sort of impact for some people because he’s been in the MCU from the start but in the Spidey movies he’s all comic relief and doesn’t even have a real emotional connection to Peter.
The best thing NWH home did was clear the decks for Peter going forward, stripping him of any lingering connections to Stark or the larger MCU. The character can and should stand on his own. It sometimes felt like he was a cameo in his own franchise.
Aunt May was kind of a shocker though, gotta admitWas it, though? To me it felt like everything was leading up to the “With great power…” moment, and Uncle Ben’s Death™ doesn’t loom over MCU Peter the way it has over every other iteration of the character, so naturally the line (and the galvanizing death) fall to Aunt May.
Sometimes I feel that way, and then a movie like Morbius reminds me of the pre-MCU era of superhero movies like Daredevil, Elektra, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four… and I appreciate what I have.
I wasn’t “anticipating” Morbius, but I was mildly curious to see it when it came out because I was reading Marvel Comics all the time back then, so I remember Dr. Morbius’s origin story.
Dread is the word. In the same way you dread having to do an autopsy on a corpse when your a doctor but its your job so you don’t get a choice.
I kinda was. At this point I’ll watch anything Marvel or adjacent
I know someone who is blindly obesessed with Leto and went as far as to defend his bs off set actions (no joke her excuse for the suicide squad condom and feces stunts was “he has to do it to be that character) she’s going opening night.
That person sounds like a massive idiot and you should stop being friends with them.
Think of it this way:There’s a cheap fairground ride, one of the kinds that you get in those little rinky-dink carnivals that pop up in the carpark of a shopping mall every so often on a long weekend. Like an old carousel or something, the animals bob up and down a bit but it doesn’t really do much. Your kids nagged you into letting them give it a try because it’s got, like, a cartoon vampire on the side or something, but you can see that they’ve discovered it’s nowhere near as good as they thought it might be. It’s not awful, exactly, but it’s monotonous. So they’re not really having that much fun and you’re not having fun but you have to wait for it to finish to collect them regardless. You know it will eventually, it’s just a matter of waiting for the inevitable so you can all leave, draw a line under the mediocre experience and look for something more fun. Also, the carnie operating the ride seems kind of sketchy and you think he might be a member of a cult. That kind of anticipation.
And if the ride breaks and injures a bunch of people, they just fold up and move on. Sort of like this movie from the sounds of it.
Curiosity, rather than anticipation, maybe? I know exactly jack squat about this character but it seems people who are more familiar thought there might be a good movie to be made about him (Leto’s involvement notwithstanding). The review suggests this is at best a fulfilled obligation by the studio.
BIG SHOUTOUT TO ALL MY FELLOW MORBIOUS-HEADS!!! THIS IS OUR TIME TO SHINE!!!
I would be Fascinated to read a film review from a Morbious-Head (I imagine the misspelling is an important part of the rich culture).
I’m pretty sure Jared Leto was anxiously anticipating its release.
I love Moribus (the character). My first comic was a giant-sized reprint of his first encounter with Spider-Man. Then I heard Leto was playing him, and my zeal for the movie was tempered. But I’ll still watch it.
I’ve been excited for every MCU movie up until Morbius. My interest level is rock bottom.
Never felt Morbius was an interesting enough character to justify a movie. Leto is pretty polarizing actor. Reviews are bad. This has all the makings of a big flop
Agree. He can be an interesting enough character but he really needs others to work well. Morbius works well as a kind of mirror to Spiderman. He also works well with Blade or Hannibal King as a kind of good guy not-quite-a-vampire (honestly, a buddy movie with Morbius as the “living vampire” teaming up with Hannibal King “turned but unwilling to give into his thirst” would be kind of cool). Splashing him in with some of the magic heroes as a bridge between science and magic could also work. But yeh, he’s not that interesting enough to hold down his own superhero movie.
The fundamental problem with Morbius in any movie is that you have to tell the boring, unoriginal story of how he became a vampire…and then, if you’re going to have real vampires (coming soon to the MCU) you then have to explain how Morbius isn’t a real vampire. I’ve fallen asleep reading comics featuring Morbius thanks to that crap. I’m not subjecting myself to a movie’s worth of it.ETA: Another big problem is that the guy could easily off himself if he was a true tragic hero. The Hulk, for example, gets away with it because he can’t, even if he tries really hard.
“I tried to put a bullet in my mouth but the other guy spat it back out.” is a line that comes from nowhere and punches you right in the face and then we never really go back and acknowledge how traumatic it is for Banner to turn in to the Hulk until the aftermath of Wakanda in Age of Ultron.
Is “polarizing” applicable when an actor’s only fans seem to be Hollywood producers, and everyone else either actively dislikes him or has no idea who he is?
Yes, but one pole is clearly heavier than the other.
“Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, whose first credit was on Luke Evans’ 2014 vampire film Dracula Untold…”Cool! They can stillbirth a *second* franchise!!
“Burk Sharpless”???That’s a joke name, like Naughtius Maximus or Biggus Dickus.
I prefer Incontinentia Buttocks myself….
BIGGUS DICKUS SHALL HEAR OF THIS
You find the name wisible?
Wewease Woger!
“We need someone to write our vampire origin movie. Quick, go get those guys who couldn’t pull it off last time a studio was depending on it.”
It’s like the producers look to see what one of the last vampire movies was and just hired the writer.
Blast Hardcheese!Trunk Slamchest!Rip Steakface!Burk Sharpless!
Is it just me or does the Sony-verse really fail at the post-credit thing?Like Venom 2 left people thinking “Oh snap, Venom’s gonna be in the MCU too, and the Symbiote knows all about Spider-Man already (thanks to trans-dimensional genetic memory or something?), is he gonna crash the multi-dimensional Spider-party?”. Then it turns out his post-credit scene was just to set up another post-credit scene. Which I’m assuming will be used to make a Necrosword in Thor 4 or have the MCU skip ‘Scorpion’ entirely and go with Mac Gargan’s ‘Venom’. Morbius ‘s trailers ended up with Michael Keaton and Tobey’s Spider-Man graffiti being the biggest draw for seeing the film and now I’m just expecting quick ‘oh hey, our universes are crossing over for a few minutes’ cameos that are likely limited to the post-credits.
Into the Spider-Verse had a good one but I can’t even really credit that to the same people behind the ‘Villain-verse’ since it being animated seemed to result in less studio interference than most of the standalone Sony Spider-films.
From what I understand, the graffiti scene isn’t in the actual film. Which makes including it in the trailer… Curious? Is a word?
It’s a one-two punch of Sony having a relatively small well of characters to draw from and the fact that they can’t seem to get any of these ancillary Spider-Man projects going with enough lead time to tease them in a preceding movie. Can’t set up a tease for your Black Cat/Silver Sable project if it’s going to shuffle writers/director/stars/premise/whether it’s a TV series or a movie once again in a months’ time.
I just read the spoilers to the post credit scene in this movie (I’m not watching this movie for a long time or maybe ever) and boy does the post credits scene sound awful.
You’re almost entirely correct about the post credits scene for this movie, with the caveat that it also really hammers home the “WE HAVE OUR OWN SHARED UNIVERSE COMING UP SOON TOO, GUYS” message.
But it’s effective, since the guy sitting next to me, who loudly guffawed several times at jokes and shouted out “Venom!” when the character says the line about “that thing in San Francisco”, very excitedly exclaimed “Sinister Six!” after the stinger.
Has there ever been an actor more tiresome than Jared Leto?I know the guy is capable of a good performance here and there but every time I see him on screen in anything I just feel this weary sigh coming from my chest.
He is exhausting. I re-watched Panic Room with the commentary track on, and David Fincher mentioned that Leto’s character having cornrows was Leto’s idea, which: of course it was.
Let’s not forget the bs he puts on his cast and crew members. He should have been blacklisted for the nonsense the he pulled on the Suicide Squad set.
Or…for his numerous instances of sexual abuse, including minors. But yeah…also the pranks.
Panic Room is still the only movie I’ve ever seen Jared Leto in
i think the funniest thing about this whole movie are the weird marketing choices that put leto front and center and try to present him as some normal guy. he is notoriously a weirdo! he’s more famous for that than his acting!
I could never put my finger on it, but I think you summed it up. Even in Urban Legend, a dopey 2000s slasher, I thought he seemed exhausting.
He actively repels me from wanting to see a film. Everything in this review’s description made it sound at least worth watching on a Sunday afternoon, but Leto is so offputting that I won’t be investing that little time. I hated him in Blade Runner 2049. The only time his face is welcome onscreen is getting pounded bloody in Fight Club.
I liked him in Blade Runner because he was really believable a creepy rich weirdo who thinks he’s better then everyone else and you could easily Invision having some kind of sex cult.Basically I think he just walked on set.
Yes! In BR2049, he’s at least playing an arrogant, bloviating asshole with delusions of significance. He made absolute sense. But I *still* thought he wasn’t right, because someone a little against that type would’ve created an interesting tension (like, maybe someone with more believable warmth to make his sadism more uncomfortable, vs. an obviously terrible man being terrible.)Everything about Morbius seems like a superhero movie circa 2008. I feel like I’ve already seen it without seeing it. They could at least have picked a less conventional lead to shake up the premise. Rami Malek or Manny Jacinto, someone uncannily beautiful but 100% not the kind of guy you’d pick to lead a punchman-with-abs movie.
“We’ll make him 20 years too young and blind, just to accentuate his uniqueness!” seemed to be about as much though as went into creating that character.
What’s especially obnoxious about his appearance in BR2049 is that you can cut his scenes from the movie and lose almost nothing. I guess his one-on-one with Deckard has some weight but otherwise he’s just providing nothing.
The interview with Tyrell (and what he reveals to Deckard), and his relationship with the replicants, were HUGE parts of the original in terms of both plot and theme, so Leto’s scenes seemed especially inconsequential by comparison. Leto’s casting didn’t help, but I felt that character was a poor idea in general.
He’s such a try hard, although the term “try hard” isn’t nearly enough to fully describe him. He reminds me of a little kid whose rich parents trot him out at every social function for him to “perform”, everyone politely claps and says “Oh, how wonderful”, but on the inside you’re like “That was weird. Does no one else see this? Please someone else make eye contact with me to let me know I’m not the only one seeing this”
Even what he wears is tiresome.
I admit, I still have some remaining affection from him being Jordan Catalano on My So-Called Life…
. From the writing team of Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. Their only writing credits have been together for Lost in Space (TV Series), Power Rangers(2017), Gods of Egypt(2016), The Last Witch Hunter(2015) and Dracula Untold(2014) – not counting Morbius(2022) this writing team scores an average 36100 MetaScore based upon 107 industry reviewers. To say that SazamaSharpless appear to be career killers is an understatement, yet the films they write for draw elite actorsactresses. This is an Avi Arad production so the expectations I had were huge going into this, and Matt Tolmach along with Lucas Foster were also onboard to make the stakes of success even higher…..but I believe I found our culprit. Emma Ludbrook, who used to be Mr. Leto’s assistant, all of a sudden became qualified as a producer, based upon the fact she is labeled ‘Producer’ for all of 30 Seconds to Mars music videos – Jared Leto’s musical group. What I see here is Jared Leto used his influence to get Emma Ludbrook her EP spot, and of course you know who Jared Leto only listened to during filming. The other fish out of water ‘Producer’ was Louise Rosner, who has a hefty production career and it’s neat to watch her excel throughout the decades(since 1988), but she hasn’t really done anything since 2017 and I suspect there’s a Jared Leto connection there as well. Moral of the story….
NEVER allow an actoractressmusicianwhatever…..
to sway direction of an original production.
Needs Eminem Rapping at the end to recap the events and themes of the film
I will repeat this rant again: the main villain being the same as the hero (Abomination, Zod, Iron Monger, etc.) is, generally, just never the way to go for the first movie. I’m not against the idea in theory but I want my intro movies to really set up the stakes of how powerful the hero is, and having them basically battle themselves does not do that.In my opinion. Which is always right.
That said, there’s also 1,000 other reasons why this looks like shit.
This is why Eternals excels as a film. Because at the end they have to fight a half-birthed baby.
Plus tentacle-dogs, which look very different from the Perfect Robot that is Gemma Chan
Eternals is the rare MCU movie that at least had me thinking about it long after the credits rolled. It came up short on some execution, but credit for being at least something different.
I want my intro movies to really set up the stakes of how powerful the
hero is, and having them basically battle themselves does not do that.Alternatively, the best way to convey how powerful your hero is would be to have them the only person capable of defeating someone who’s just like them….and the only thing that makes them stronger/better is the fact they’re good. Or, at least, the villain is slightly weaker because they lack the thing that makes the hero who they are.Which is why I think it’s a great trope for origin films.
So, you would say Morbius….sucks?
Admittedly, it’s odd to want a movie like this to have been worse, but that would mean it failed as bigly as the swings it took; by comparison, Morbius is a walk, or at best a bunt. That may qualify it as a hit for Leto, Espinoza and Sony, but that doesn’t mean it’s much fun to watch from the stands.Oh. I get it. ‘Vampire.’ ‘Bat.’ ‘Baseball.’Heh.
Look, it was a shitty movie. The reviewer has to entertain himself SOMEHOW.
They can do that on THEIR time!Review time is when I get entertained!
Or maybe someone had opening day tickets and is salty about now having to wait for half of a September double-header.
It’s not such a big deal to me since I won’t be seeing this movie anyway, but must the entire story be described in the review? The second and third paragraphs read like a script summary. There might be some who would rather not go in with so many details spelled out ahead of time.
There might be some who would rather not go in with so many details spelled out ahead of time.There are?
a fun thing i do when i notice that happening is just…skip those paragraphs.
Jared Leto turns in to a vampire, mopes for a while, fights some bad guys, and then the movie ends.
The days of spoiler free reviews seem to be mostly over, and I’ve long since stopped reading reviews until after I’ve already seen a movie. Even Dowd and the rest of the old gang, who were all pretty great reviewers, regularly discussed plot details, though they were typically circumspect about crucial or meaty stuff. Honestly, this review isn’t too bad on that front, it’s just that the actual story here is pretty much so thin that you can’t help but summarize it in two lines. The only thing he discusses that’s not in the trailer is that going into the movie, I thought Matt Smith’s character was a government type tracking down Morbius.
This review makes me sad, I was hoping it was a D- type of mess that I can watch drunk on the coach in the future and laugh at it.
Eh, they also claimed that JARED FUCKING LETO doesn’t take himself so seriously in this, so maybe take this review with a grain of salt. Definitely still looks like a D to me.
Agreed everything about it screams D at best.
Eventually we can have Blade come kick the shit out of Morbius, right?
I’ll call Wesley Snipes right now. Don’t even need a camera crew.
Hmmm. On the one hand, I have no interest in the character. On the other, I really dislike Jared Leto. Tough to decide whether to see this or not!
You know, the message we the audience will presumably send is “Hey, this movie kind of sucks and nobody likes your lead.” But the message execs are going to receive is “We only want the same shiny family-friendly slop from all of our superhero movies, and also, we only want those movies, nothing else, forever, thank you.”
And like a vampire….here’s Sony bleeding that Marvel license dry….
at least the film is out now. people can see it or not see it. I’m sure it will have a good run on cable, DVD and streaming. If Sony had lost the rights to the Spider-Man franchise, I doubt that Morbius would have been on the priority list for films. Too bad that Sony proper doesn’t have folks in charge like a Kevin Feige who can do more quality control over how these films are prioritized and put together.Former overall Marvel Films boss Avi Arad is still involved in the Sony-Columbia productions. He still seems giddy at the idea of a Sinister Six evil-Avengers team up down the line. In comparison, I’d be more interested in the Spider-Man allies who are presumably tied to Sony’s control: Prowler (Hobie Brown), Silver Sable, Rocket Racer, and the Slingers.
“We want Morbius!”“We have Morbius at home!”
(puts on “The Brain Of Morbius” DVD & there is much rejoicing)
Morbius is prominently featured in “Forbidden Planet”.Just sayin’.
All of you reviewing this movie are too cowardly to just run the headline “Morbius Sucks.”
I completely forgot this was coming out
So… the so-called SSU is three films deep. All three films have been critically unbeloved, but the Venom films have at least done well at the box office. Do not expect that for Morbius.
It seems the only way Sony’s Marvel properties can truly succeed is by letting Marvel call the creative shots.
What’s weird about it is that Matt Smith’s characters basically a Ryan Gosling Romcom Character If Ryan Gosling Was A Gay Vampire. Like I don’t know if Matt Smith was supposed to have a thing for Jared Leto but his whole character was like “Notice Me Jared, notice me! Why won’t you notice me? Why can’t we be together? You an I, together forever.” Like his whole motivation was that he like wanted to shack up with Jared Leto.
Your comment just sent a flustered movie exec into a panic attack trying to work out if vampires were still a thing and if Ryan Gosling was still a thing.
Appears Jared Le Toe chose this particular role to dial down some of his weirder am-dram flourishes, and the result is he’s just a bit boring instead.
He can’t win can he?
And I’ll tell you why – it is because he’s a shit actor.
after two years of anticipationwait, what?
This film is under two hours and has the dumbest tagline I can remember. It will either be dumb fun or just dull.
‘Burk Sharpless’ would make for a far more interesting film.