Morbius Review

Morbius is one of those films that is going to be a huge risk for Columbia Pictures/Sony. While, on the surface, Morbius looks like a gothic horror film about a Doctor turned Vampire, you need to take into account two things: Morbius isn’t a well-known character outside of comic nerds, and he is nowhere near the level of a Spider-Man or Venom in name value. So when you go to see Morbius, you’re either going to walk out a happy comic book fan, or a disappointed general moviegoer.

Title: Morbius
Production Company: Columbia Pictures & Marvel Entertainment
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Releasing
Directed by: Daniel Espinosa
Produced by: Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, Lucas Foster
Written by: Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless
Starring: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, Tyrese Gibson
Based on: Morbius, the Living Vampire by Roy Thomas & Gil Kane via Marvel Comics
Release dates: April 1, 2022 (US) / March 31, 2022 (Australia)
Running time: 104 minutes
Rating: PG-13 (US) / M (Australia)

Morbius Begins… (Story)

Morbius is a very standard by the numbers story. Dr. Michael Morbius has gone through his life with a degenerative blood condition that causes his body to be weak, affecting his ability to walk and do things in general. He starts his life (or at least his childhood) in a special facility where he is isolated from the world, along with others like him, while getting 3 blood transfusions a day in order to stay alive. Another child, by the name of Lucian (Who Morbius nicknames Milo), arrives at the same facility and ends up almost dying due to an issue with the transfusion machine, which Morbius fixes. The facilitator, Emil Nikols, notices Morbius’ intelligence and gets him transferred to a private school in New York where he can learn about anything he wants. Morbius uses this time to become the leading researcher into blood disorders, even creating a synthetic plasma that saved millions.

Morbius keeps trying to cure his blood disorder for himself and his friend Milo at Horizon Labs, using bat DNA to create a coagulant that will fix their own issues. Upon finding a suitable compound that worked on a mouse test subject, Morbius contacts Milo to get help with taking the experiment into international waters so they can move the project onto human trials. Morbius, along with his friend/co-worker, Martine Bancroft, conduct the experiment and inject Morbius with the compound… And as you would expect, the end result is Morbius: The Living Vampire, who kills everyone but Martine on the ship (Milo hired mercenaries to guard the boat in international waters). When Morbius realizes what he has done, he grabs the compound and jumps ship, calling in a mayday call to the coast guard so that Martine is rescued… This also gets the attention of two FBI agents: Alberto Rodriguez and Simon Stroud.

Back in New York, Morbius goes back to his lab and starts experimenting on himself to work out the new powers he has gotten from the project. He has heightened hearing, sonar, super speed, super strength, and more that’ll come later in the film. However, the side effect is that like the Vampire Bat he used in the project, he must digest blood in order to keep himself under control and keep his newfound abilities. Luckily, Morbius is able to use his own synthetic plasma instead of blood, but with diminishing results. Milo visits Morbius at the lab, learning of what Morbius has turned himself into, and wants to take the compound too, but Morbius refers to the results as a mistake and a curse… One night soon after, while Morbius is experimenting on how long he can go without plasma or blood, a nurse is killed not too far outside of his lab.

Upon awakening at the hospital, Martine is interviewed by Rodriguez and Stroud, with their investigation leading them to Horizon Labs just as Morbius is trying to leave the building after the nurse is found. The two FBI Agents put the building into lockdown just as they start talking to Morbius, who drops his crippled act and leaps to the roof of the building from the inside, Stroud taking off in pursuit. Stroud is able to capture Morbius on the roof due to Morbius almost being swept off the rooftop by the wind.

While in jail, Morbius is interviewed by the two agents but explains that he is not understanding what he is and what is going on… Since Morbius has no memory of killing the nurse. Later on, while in his jail cell, Milo visits Morbius, and the two talk about what has happened, with Milo leaving a bag of blood behind as Morbius was on the verge of turning into his monster self again. However, upon leaving the cell, Milo leaves behind his walking stick, prompting Morbius to understand that Milo (somehow) was able to steal the compound and has used it on himself, becoming a vampire too.

From here, Morbius confronts Milo, who admits that he stole and used the compound and accepts the monster that he has to become in order to overcome their blood disorder. The two face off in a few fights as Morbius takes any downtime to set up a new lab off the grid. As is typical with superhero movies, Martine falls for Morbius and is kidnapped by Milo to use as bait for the two to fight. Milo ends up killing Martine, but Morbius gets to her in time for her to pass (but only after she bites his lip and takes some of his blood) and then, for some reason, drains her blood before facing Milo for a final time. Morbius defeats Milo in their final fight, using bats to keep Milo down enough for Morbius to inject Milo with an anti-serum that would kill anyone who was turned by the compound.

After Milo is defeated and Morbius flies (with the help of the winds and bats) away into the night… Back on the rooftop, Martine awakens as a Vampire herself. Meanwhile, the rip in reality from Spider-Man: No Way Home opens up and Adrian Toomes appears in a random jail cell, stating that he hopes the food is better in this reality than in his previous one. The news of Toomes makes the news, stating that in this reality he is a free man. Later, outside New York, Morbius is driving to a remote location where he meets with Toomes, complete in Vulture gear, Toomes says that he doesn’t know what happened but it has something to do with Spider-Man and the two should keep in touch for an eventual team up as the movie ends.

Almost Straight Out of the Comic Pages… (Characters)

• Jared Leto as Dr. Michael Morbius:
  Leto has redeemed himself as Morbius here. After some horrible times as The Joker in Suicide Squad & Justice League, seeing him as someone more subtle yet aggressive is a breath of fresh air. The role just felt natural for him, playing a very calm and smart Michael, while getting some badass moments in as the Vampire Morbius. You could see the struggle of keeping the Vampire at bay in everything he did as Michael, right down to the scared emotion in his eyes. Leto felt like he was channeling some early Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles character work as a more restrained Louis de Pointe du Lac. This is a role that I hope Leto is allowed to reprise a lot more over the next few years.
• Matt Smith as Lucien/Milo:
  A complete show stealer! Smith playing what my wife and I called “Doctor Who with the restraints and morals removed” was a delight to see every time he was on screen. Smith, according to rumors, only took this role due to fellow Doctor Who co-star Karen Gillian telling him to give it a chance after her time as Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy, it was great to see Smith take the role of a villain and just run with it. Given that this is a completely new character for the movie, it gave Smith the openness to make this role his own and it showed.
• Adria Arjona as Martine Bancroft:
  A very bland character with very little development over the course of the film. However, given what happens to her character near the end of Morbius I think we are only getting started with her role in this Morbius series of films or the Sony Marvel Universe.
• Jared Harris as Emil “Nicholas” Nikols:
  A mentor and father figure for Morbius and Milo who runs a facility that looks after people with incurable illnesses… And that’s it. There seems to be a missing part to the story where we are meant to have some sort of connection to Nikols, but it was left on the cutting room floor.
• Al Madrigal as Alberto “Al” Rodriguez & Tyrese Gibson as Simon Stroud:
  Two FBI agents hunting Morbius. A couple of completely wasted and pointless roles here. They start to put things together only to disappear around the mid-point of the movie and then reappear for no reason at the end… Pointless.
• Michael Keaton  as Adrian Toomes / Vulture:
  Wow, talk about misdirection. The trailers, especially the final one, really made Toomes out to be a bigger part of the whole Morbius movie than what we saw delivered on the screen at the end. All we got in Morbius was nothing more than an extended two-scene cameo that is teasing something more that might happen down the line. Bit of a shame of this bait and switch tactic.
  

A Great Adaptation of the Origins of Morbius (What Worked)

Morbius as an adaptation of the origin story of The Living Vampire is probably one of the best I’ve seen put on film out of all the Marvel properties out there. You get a real sense of the “man vs monster” idea that plagues Morbius as a character through the great acting of Leto. Add into this the show-stealing acting of Matt Smith as the new character Milo and what you get is an amazing and exciting origin story that holds a lot of potential for future movies, or at least cameos in other films/TV shows, from characters who really do deserve more time in the spotlight that has been dominated by heavy-hitting superstar names like Spider-Man and Venom.

He’s no Batman, Man-Bat, Blade, or Dracula… (What didn’t work)

Alternatively, the Morbius that I saw looked and felt like something completely different than what we were promised by the trailers and word-of-mouth outlines that we saw for months leading up to Morbius’s release. The trailers made Morbius look like it was going to be more gothic-horror as a film than a Sci-Fi/Action film that we got, with more talking and interest in the “man vs monster” dynamic that Morbius himself was going through. Hell, we didn’t know anything about Matt Smith’s character at all thanks to some very clever misdirection using Adrian Toomes as more of the main villain than what we got with Smith as Milo. We also saw more horror-style direction and scene work in the trailers than what actually happened in Morbius, and overall this hurt the film more than it helped it.

Speaking of the change in tone, that brings me to the many plot holes and missing moments from trailer to film. You could tell that Morbius was meant to be a longer and more involved movie, with a focus on characters like Martine, Nikols, and Agents Rodriguez & Shroud that what we got. There seems to be a completely different movie left on the cutting room floor that would have done Morbius a lot more credit than what we got. Something tells me that we need a “Snyder Cut” (Not 4 hours, but a longer and restored version) of Morbius in order to get the film that the characters and actors deserved.

One for the Die-Hards Only (Closing)

Morbius is going to appeal to two types of people: Marvel die-hards who need to see every single Marvel movie regardless of which studio makes it, and those people who already know about the Morbius character and want to see how he is handled on the big screen. Those types of people are going to walk away happy with how well and accurate Morbius is as a movie. Outside of those types of people though, Morbius isn’t going to be a huge box office success for Sony as the character is too unknown by the mass market to make enough money to give Morbius another shot on the big screen… Maybe crossovers in other films and TV shows could work for Morbius and crew.