Morbius

 

Gillipedia Official Rating: I almost fell asleep at one point.

          When prompted by a friend on my thoughts after the credits rolled, the above rating was the first words out of my mouth. This isn’t an atrocious film, but as another friend remarked, it’s more like Snorebius. Ultimately, without character development and strong motivations, it’s hard to ever feel invested in this film. At least it’s under 2 hours.

          If you think of some of your top action films, what stands out to you? Some examples that spring to mind for me are the John Wick trilogy, Mad Max: Fury Road, and let’s throw the Mission: Impossible saga in there as well. John Wick was motivated by the loss of his dog from his late wife. Max develops a bond with Furiosa who is trying to save imprisoned women from the clutches of a diabolical warlord, and Tom Cruise is freaking Tom Cruise and saves the world and that’s enough for me. The point is that we are given these foundations, and through small moments of dialogue or looks the characters give, we become invested and have stakes in the game. And then the blood-pounding action provides thrills and genuine moments of suspense as we worry about if our heroes will come out on top. There’s not a single moment that made me feel that way in Morbius.

          I think Jared Leto is well cast as Dr. Michael Morbius; however, he’s committed to a monotone voice, so when he delivers the Marvel one-liners, the delivery is deadpan. There are some clever lines here, but in a packed theater, I didn’t hear a single laugh, and the root cause is the delivery. The sympathy we’re supposed to feel is from Morbius’ childhood where he is bed-ridden due to a rare blood disease, and he befriends a child in a similar situation, Milo who is played by Doctor Who’s Matt Smith when they grow up. Am I here to publicly say I don’t feel sympathy for these children with rare diseases that forces them to be on crutches for their entire lives? Of course not. But even the scenes where Milo is bullied and beat up by other kids feels stale and unoriginal. Morbius is presented as the gifted kid, so we flash forward to him researching away and saving lives with the invention of artificial blood that was somehow, and never really explained, funded by Milo.

          And if you’ve ever seen a movie, it won’t come as a surprise that after Morbius injects himself with his own antibody creation that is supposed to cure his disease (it’s bat DNA), he turns into the titular Morbius with an unquenchable thirst for babes and human blood—okay maybe only the latter. He kills and drains the blood of mindless mercenaries and realizes that he can keep things under control with artificial blood—but it’s only a matter of time before that wears off. He also is given superhuman strength and can sort of transport a bit Nightcrawler style. When Milo finds out, he ignores Morbius’ warning about how dangerous this is and how it’s really a curse, and Milo takes the injection as well. And from there they have the typical formula of bad guy basically has the same abilities as the hero, but here, Milo’s motivation is really lacking. Like it really feels like he’s just taking a night out on the town hunting down some juicy people liquids.

          Since The Batman is still fresh on the mind, I’ll also reference that. Throughout that film, we’re trying to figure out The Riddler’s clues right alongside Batman as the structure of Gotham’s democracy is crumbling. But Morbius has one scene where we wonder if Morbius was capable of killing a single mom nurse, and then after that, it’s just about ooOOoooo we’re running out of time better stop Milo. So the stakes and motivation never settled in.

          But with the 3 previous films I mentioned, I can distinctly remember plenty of insane action sequences or moments. Despite a subpar storyline, Morbius could still be saved by great action... But it doesn’t have that either. The first scene with the mercenaries is a discount version of Batman Begins where Batty stops that drug haul. In fact, a lot of this film is discount Batman Begins. There’s literally a moment in a cave where Morbius is on the ground and slowly rises as bats swarm around him to a score that is the discount Hans Zimmer. But I digress. The rest of the action scenes are all the same. There’s a cool particle effect they use where a blackish mist follows Morbius as he zooms from one place to the next, and it’s very frantic. If he’s fighting someone, occasionally it will go super slow-mo for us to see him do something lame like slap a dude’s face with his long fingernails. The scene with the nurse is the one attempt the film makes at horror, and even then it just felt impractical. And at the end when we get the killblow, it feels like, wait that was it? It’s a relatively short climax where Morbius and Milo hug each other for awhile while flying through the air. Basically.

          The effects are a mixed bag. Some aspects are pretty good, but it’s hard to get past Morbius’ face. They incave the cheekbones so much that all I could think of was Jim Carrey in The Mask. But when he uses his echolocation, there’s some cool, subtle stuff going on with his ears. That was a small detail that I have no idea how scientific it is, but it was cool.

          Despite my criticisms for a weak motivation, Matt Smith is easily the best part. It’s definitely by design, but him being the foil of deadpan Leto allows him to bring personality to the screen and go a little wild. Jared Harris plays the doctor that treated the two while they were growing up and is hence the father figure. I recently watched him in the superb Chernobyl mini-series, and he’s admirable here. Oh and spoiler, but Milo ends up killing him, and that still makes no sense to me except to show that oh hey, yeah Milo really is a bad guy here. We also have a female doctor that works with Morbius, and completely out of the blue, they’ll kiss near the end. There was zero build up to that. Tyrese Gibson is also here and takes his job too seriously as an agent.

          If you’ve heard that this movie really exists just to setup future films in this Sony-Marvel universe, you heard correctly. There’s a line from Gibson’s partner earlier on that references the events in San Francisco— aka Venom. And I’m going to save you some time here if you go watch. There are 2 end credit scenes, one after like the first 3 credits, and then another after the initial credits with the animations. They’re both related though, so I don’t know why they had to split it up. There is nothing after the long credits, so you can leave after the second scene that I’m guessing is referencing a possible Sinister Six. Actually, I’m going to save you some more time. Skip this movie, and just watch the end credit scenes online. There you go. You just got 1 ½ hours back. You’re welcome. Goodnight.