Morbius

By Jonah Naplan

April 1, 2022

“Morbius” is a movie so disappointingly bad that I was almost impressed leaving the theater. Impressed at what an underwhelming movie Daniel Espinosa and his filmmakers managed to make. It’s a film with a history spanning several years, as the movie kept getting delayed over and over and over again. The movie has had many reshoots, re-edits, and re-writings, as the filmmakers struggled to tell this flawed story correctly. For the sake of context, the very first trailer for “Morbius” was released the very same week that the first SET PHOTO was shown for “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” NWH was shot, edited, released, and able to make almost two billion dollars, all in the time that “Morbius” still hadn’t even completed its supposed reshoots. But at what cost?

From scene one of this incoherent mess, “Morbius” has gaping holes in its logic. Plotlines are carelessly scattered every which way, the tone of certain scenes is inconsistent, and Jared Leto as Michael Morbius, isn’t bad, but he doesn’t really know who he wants to be. In some scenes, he’s that familiar “charming movie star,” but in others, he’s just as grim and serious as Pattinson in “The Batman.” Style comes easy to Leto, and his performance is perhaps the highlight of the film, therefore it’s unfortunate that the painfully 2D character he received didn’t meet his talented needs. Matt Smith as Milo, the villain of “Morbius,” feels much the same way. He’s decent enough for the character he’s attempting to play, but nothing more. His character provides some of the worst development I’ve seen in a villain from the entirety of the Marvel Universe. We somewhat understand his paper-thin motives - he wants to kill and concoct revenge on Morbius, and wreak havoc on his surroundings, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you why.

We see these two characters as children early on in the film, as portrayed in one of the few compelling scenes. As their relationship blossoms, so does our belief in their friendship. But as the rest of this choppy film plays out, said relationship buries itself seventeen feet underground as Morbius and Milo fight it out in the blandest, most CGI-driven final battle I’ve seen in recent years. When it was all over, I felt like I just had my recent hernia surgery all over again. Except this time, my surgeons were the Sony Corporate employees messing with body parts they don’t entirely understand. When I woke up from my anesthesia, everything appeared to be in the right place, but nothing felt right, like the doctors had accidentally swapped heart and soul for Jellicle-like CGI effects on the face of Matt Smith.

Much of “Morbius” feels like it’s indicative of a larger, more progressive story, but the result we got appears more like a footnotes-based, rights-retaining film with more missed opportunities than I have fingers. It’s easy to pinpoint exactly where the new footage was dropped into the film because it’s so darn obvious. Some scenes look as if they were shot two years ago, and others two months ago. This unfortunate revelation does not at all compliment the film’s tonal clumsiness, and if anything, the film’s reshoots came to its severe disadvantage.

Therefore, certain nuances and reveals in “Morbius” don’t make any darn sense. It’s difficult to understand how the character of Morbius even functions, because whenever his powers are showcased onscreen, it’s either through a discombobulating montage, or through Paul W.S. Anderson-level shaky cam action sequences. I know and have seen Marvel do better than this, so how and why did this film turn out the way it did? There’s an extended sequence in the middle of the movie that features our two monster/vampire things fighting, and then all of a sudden Morbius begins to, well, he begins to fly. Yep. Morbius can fly now, in a scene so shockingly contrived and random that I could not believe the images flashing before my eyes onscreen. How did Marvel let this happen?! On the one hand, it’s disturbing to realize that no one involved in the production of “Morbius” stopped to think about how these decisions make literally no sense, but on the other hand, the movie had been delayed 2,578 times! The filmmakers had time to fix these mistakes! How did we still get this unsubstantial product?!

After watching Jared Leto sleepwalk through his role in that final battle scene I mentioned earlier, the movie then just…ends. There’s no conclusion. No snapshot of Michael’s life after these events. Morbius and his bats all just fly off into the night after this final battle, and then the movie cuts to black. And in all seriousness, the ending fits this sloppy movie fairly well. It doesn’t know what it wants to be, so it goes for the worst case scenario, and tries to be everything.

None of these things legitimately bothered me in the way that they might for other viewers, as I left this movie more disappointed than disgusted. “Morbius” could have been many things, but this final product is certainly not one of them. To sum things up, there’s a reason it was released on April Fools Day.