Morbius

This review may contain spoilers!

 

Morbius follows Dr. Michael Morbius, a terminally ill man who experiments upon himself in an attempt to cure his disease. Things only turn to the worse as Morbius' cure instead transforms him into a vampire-like being with a thirst for human blood. This film really juggles a variety of elements that I think it handles quite well, particularly in the initial first act. I enjoyed how the film framed this as a man to monster type story, treading those moments of impending dread like in The Fly. Seeing Morbius work from a good place and become something he fundamentally can't abide being was one of the great plot elements of the film. I also felt like the horror elements early on in the film were presented well, chiefly in the cargo ship scene. While I didn't ultimately feel satisfied by the Morbius/Milo friendship the way this pair was introduced and presented together was one of the only genuine character relationships I liked the whole film.

 

Matt Smith, who played Milo, made for an interesting antagonist for the feature; he has this nonchalant persona that turns into sudden intense blind rage which I felt Smith played very well.

 

However, the best performance came from Jared Leto, who played Dr. Michael Morbius. This character had such a tragic arc that he was by far the easiest role to feel empathy for. Leto really found a nice way to show the shift in physicality, moving between a frail and sickly man to a tortured yet powerful one with ease. I loved seeing the kind ness and compassion Morbius held, chiefly before he took the vampire injection. It really grounded you in the idea that this was a figure who was consumed with a desire to help those struggling as he was. Leto also used a quiet wit to the role that I thought was subtle and nice, it made the character a little more fun to watch. I was also impressed with how Leto showed the descent into becoming the monster, those moments of more primal and animalistic reaction. Coupling that part of the performance with the scenes in which his character went through personal moments of grief and it was clearly the best role of the feature.

 

I don't really understand the point of making a Morbius film, there are far more enticing Spider-Man related characters Sony could've made but we got this one. So why is that? Well, Morbius is a chiefly good character with a darker side, but really quite an anti-hero. He's very similar to what a Venom film can look like in terms of tone and I think this is sort of the point. There's no love behind the creation of Morbius, and in spite of a strong leading performance from Leto, it really felt like this film was pushed out to further a blockbuster franchise rather than on its own merits. The entire movie has a very rushed pacing, yet in spite of that little ground is covered and there's a lot of repetition. The entire film opens with a dramatic bat sequence that turns out to not really serve much purpose other than 'cool' factor. Seeing Morbius and Milo as children felt like a hasty flashback, with Morbius very questionably stripping his future best friend of his own name before promptly turning into a medical prodigy that can fix a life support machine in the blink of an eye. The film would throw out elements and hope they land without ever really placing these aspects in the spotlight: things like Dr. Ncholas as a form of father figure, Morbius and Martine's blossoming romance or the on/off appearance of the FBI detectives who were 'investigating' the strange circumstances. The meat of the film that was almost the entire substance of acts 2 and 3 was the cat and mouse between Morbius and Milo; one adamant that the vampirism was a curse while the other was sure it was a blessing. Yet this conflict kept repeating itself constantly without going anywhere at all, until it stumbled through a very quick final fight that rushed us rather abruptly into credits. While I wouldn't usually look too closely at post credits scenes in relation to the film, I have to say what the film did with Martine and then Vulture was such gratutious bait for a sequel that I was resoundingly unimpressed as an audience member. The film really needed to stand on its own merit before teasing anything like that, but as I mentioned previously Morbius wasn't made for us. It was made for Sony.

 

I also have to talk about some other disappointing elements of the Morbius production. The cinematography is lacking, with a bunch of generic mid shots and almost every action sequence looking identical. Seriously, the amount of slow motion flowing fight or chase sequences got more annoying than the first Venom. The special effects for Morbius aren't great either, the work done to create Morbius and Milo's vampire faces is often inconsistent and poorly done. I also couldn't understand the need to have this energy flowing off Morbius everytime he used any aspect of his powers, it made sense for echolocation but everything else was overkill. The final fight of the film looked terrible because it was such a busy thing to watch visually. Jon Ekstrand's score is rather dour and never packs much of a punch; the themes between characters or moments doesn't ever vary greatly.  

Adria Arjona, who played Martine Bancroft, is a very stoic figure who never feels as attached to the protagonist as you think she ought to be; Martine ultimately plays out as a romantic interest for Morbius but Arjona is often playing their relationship in a rather distant way. Jared Harris, who played Dr. Emil Nicholas, just delivers the blandest exposition in the film; Harris' is often labelled as a father figure but you can never really describe his on-screen chemistry with Leto or Smith as being close. Al Madrigal and Tyrese Gibson, who played Agent Rodriguez and Simon Stroud respectively, feel adjacent to the action but never really involved; it is hysterical to me that the moment Gibson isn't in a Fast and Furious film the ability to show any form of emotion abandons him. Charlie Shotwell and Joseph Esson, who played Young Michael and Young Milo respectively, really fail to introduce these characters to you well; it can be hard to generate good performances from kids but the emotions from this pair are all over the place. Michael Keaton, who played Adrian Toomes, is not interested in playing the role we saw in Spider-Man: Homecoming; this man is here for a pay cheque built around the easiest cameo of his career.

Michael Morbius is one of Marvel's most obscure characters and after this film I can only hope we endeavour to condemn him to continue in obscurity. I would give Morbius a 3.5/10.