Sony's Marvel universe has kicked off its 2022 slate of feature films with Morbius, starring Jared Leto as the titular Dr. Michael Morbius. The film experienced multiple delays due to the pandemic. It was originally meant to be released in March 2021 and then in October of the same year and now, finally, a full year after its initial release date, it is finally seeing the light of day. And let me be the one to say: I could have happily waited another decade.
Dr. Michael Morbius is a famed genius doctor who specializes in blood diseases, having concocted life-saving synthetic blood that has apparently saved more lives than penicillin. His research is fueled by his own condition, a rare blood disease that affects his ability to walk, which leads him to rely on crutches for mobility. He’s also inspired by his best friend, Milo (Matt Smith), whom he met in a hospital when they were both children and who suffers the same affliction. When Morbius makes a breakthrough in his research — successfully extracting DNA from a bat and attaching it to another animal — he and his work partner and fellow doctor, Martine (Adria Arjona), carry out the experiment. Obviously, it doesn't go to plan.
Similar to the inception of the Green Goblin, Michael wakes up in the lab as a murderous superhuman vampire. His face is transformed into a terrifying creature with long fangs and sharp claw-like nails. He can move at superhuman speed, crawl ceilings, and fly. There’s just one catch: he needs to consume blood every six hours. When Milo catches word of this, he turns himself into the same creature — but because he drinks human blood rather than synthetic like Michael, he has an even more nefarious side. The rest of the film sees the pair duke it out as Michael tries to stop himself from fully indulging in his monstrous side, walking the line between hero and villain.
With Marvel churning out content like a cow produces milk, it's been hard to believe how they still bring fresh and nuanced stories to the table — like Spider-Man: No Way Home or Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. However, the superhero studio has finally caught up with itself in its latest tandem release with Sony, as Morbius is one of its most stale, unoriginal, and forgettable outings. From start to finish, the film feels completely rushed. We get barely any backstory into the protagonist we are meant to empathize with through the entire picture. We know little about Dr. Michael Morbius. The film tries to give us a character that we can identify with as he cares for young children and tries to cure his best friend, but it all feels like filler, just waiting for the action to start.
The first 30 minutes of the film rush through Milo and Michael’s meeting, Michael’s life up until this point, and his research into bat DNA, completely skipping the time between his childhood and present day, and relying on another character to briefly summarize those events. By now, we know that in order to root for the hero (or villain) is to know what makes them tick — their flaws, hopes, desires, insecurities, or any other minor details that make up this larger-than-life character. But for Michael, we are expected to go along with it because... he's a genius?
The central problem of Morbius is a lazy and uninspiring script. No weight or depth is given to any character. There’s little humor and when it tries to make a tongue-in-cheek joke, it fails miserably. Being a villain origin story of sorts, it’s fair to draw similarities with Venom. However, Morbius lacks all charm and devotion to its main character, hoping that lengthy action sequences and jarring images of Leto and Smith’s animated faces will make us forget about how poor the script is.
Morbius prioritizes action over substance, doing little to establish character arcs, dynamics, and backstories in favor of focusing on action sequences, fights, and flashy CGI. In terms of the supporting cast, Jared Harris, as Milo and Michael’s doctor and mentor Nicholas, gets barely any airtime, wasting what could have been an important father figure who can effectively inject some emotion into the film — as seen in the likes of Uncle Ben, or even DC's Alfred Pennyworth. Instead, he’s a useless bystander, never offering any wisdom or implementing so much as a moral code in Michael. Arjona gets the same treatment. Although the MCU has frequently welcomed a subversion to the classic damsel-in-distress character, offering love interests more personality and independence from the romance, Martine, unfortunately, falls away into the background — only present to ask Michael what his plans are and help in the lab but ultimately failing to bring any real weight to the story.
The friends-turned-enemy trope can be an interesting and compelling catalyst for action — it’s done with some degree of intensity in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. What works with Peter Parker and Harry Osborn's feud is that the trilogy took the time to establish the friendship of the pair. We saw Harry and Peter go from high-school best friends to romantic rivals to enemies, making the conclusive fight all the more heartbreaking. Morbius, on the other hand, doesn't bother to establish an authentic friendship between Michael and Milo. They have few scenes together before they are meant to be sworn enemies. Even at the end of the film, there’s little regret between the pair about how their friendship came apart, which begs the question: were they really friends at all? On the topic of enemies, Smith's Milo comes closer to resembling that creep in the corner of your local bar than an MCU bad guy. Villains work best when they're either terrifying or charming; Milo doesn't reach either side at all.
If I can praise anything about this film, it would be that Leto does feel somewhat comfortable in the role. Instead of letting the lazy writing wash over him, he does what he can with it. With Leto having a recent stream of flop performances as Joker and Paolo Gucci, Morbius may suggest that Leto works best in less eccentric roles. It's the first time we’ve seen the actor stripped down to the bones, with prosthetics and wigs far removed. Of course, he does play a monstrous vampire, but when he’s Michael, Leto knows he's the driving force of the film and uses it to his abilities.
In classic Marvel style, we know that this may not be the last time we’ll see Dr. Michael Morbius. If the post-credit kicker is to be believed, he's sure to pop up in other superhero vehicles and potentially have his own sequels. Despite Morbius being utterly forgettable, I have hope that if the character is given the right care and attention, an interesting antihero could rise from the narrative ashes of his solo outing. But for now, Morbius is the Sony Marvel universe’s first major disappointment in a while.
Rating: D+
Morbius is slated for release on April 1.