This had potential to be a good film but sadly the dull storyline, shoddy cgi and lack of effort acting makes this film seem a lot longer than its 90 minutes running time.
The film has been maligned on twitter as a horrible parody of what a superhero film should be.
However, based on recent entries such as Eternals and Thor Love and Thunder this isn't bad. Just cheesy and decidedly average. Matt Smith hams it up and Jared Harris is wasted but nothing about this is terrible.
Jared Leto doesn't do the annoying celebrity thing of keeping his face always on show by vamping up fairly reguarly. He also takes a fairly one dimensional comic character and makes him likeable.
In short the bar was set low with the source material and achieves its objective of a fun film.
It’s reasonably interesting for c25mins as Jared Leto searches for a cure to his illness, then it goes all cgi silly as he gets the standard set of cgi superpowers (he’s stronger and can fly). From then on it’s by-the-numbers predictable as he indulges in fisticuffs with Matt Smith (a baddie with the same superpowers). It’s kiddy cartoon stuff with no depth of plot or character and a climax that’s an underwhelming fast-edited mish-mash of pixels. Good points? At 90mins, it’s shorter than other Marvel bores, so an extra star for not inflicting more on the viewer.
Where exactly does Morbius fall on the timeline of Marvel movies? Well, it apparently exists within the same universe as Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The timeframe is certainly some time after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home based on the mid-credit citation of the multiverse briefly splintering. There’s also some relation to Spider-Man: Homecoming based on the cameo of another villain. None of this is important to understanding the story of Morbius. None of it would fix it either.
Morbius is posed as a mad scientist story about a doctor who is seeking a cure for his rare blood disease. The doctor is Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) and his life is incredibly boring despite being so noble. This could be mostly due to Leto’s performance which is far too detached and dead, even for a character who is playing a vampire. So, he fuses bat DNA with human blood, tests it on himself hoping for a cure, and finds a way to make himself a vampire. Well, not a proper vampire; he doesn’t burn in the sun and isn’t affected by holy water. He just sorta craves blood and is agile enough to soar through the skies.
Here’s how boring Morbius turns out to be. He goes from being a skinny and weak man not long for this world and suddenly transforms into a muscular dude with vampire powers, able to scale walls and fly. What is his reaction? “Hmm, that’s neat, I guess.” Now, one would think this would make Michael’s recluse childhood friend Milo (Matt Smith), affected with the same disease and then vampire cure, the more interesting character. He almost is. Milo takes more glee in his new abilities but can do little more than do a little dance and munch on a little flesh. The two will fight, of course, in a fight that is quite similar to the first Venom movie. What I mean by that is that there’s a lot of CGI and a lot of slow-motion shots when the completely CGI characters aren’t zooming about the screen in a literal blur of effects.
Providing little backup is Morbius’s lab assistant Martine (Adria Arjona). She tries to be the voice of reason but her words rarely go with heed. She also exists more like a damsel in distress around action scenes and a love interest when no action is happening. Even less of a compelling character is Jared Harris as both the father of Morbius and the doctor of Milo. Harris is such a great actor and here he is in a film where he feels like the most passive player, providing some small bits of morality that are slathered in pathetic pathos.
Nothing about Morbius works. The character is a snooze, the special effects are a mess, the horror is lacking, and the fights are just a tiring retread of a dozen other mundane superhero films that evaporated from most people’s memory (Remember Bloodshot? No?). All of it just feels so limp, to the point where I found myself fantasizing about better films where this movie rips from. There’s a scene where Leto lavishes in a swarm of bats and all I could think of was, “man, I loved that scene in Batman Begins where young Bruce Wayne is surrounded by bats.” I watched the fight scene between Morbius and Milo and all I could think of was how much more I should give the first Venom movie another shot. Maybe I was too hard on Venom? I certainly feel that way after watching Morbius.
This is one Marvel movie you can skip, even if you’re only watching it for the promise of other Marvel movies. Trust me, the short running time is not worth that 30 second commercial at the end.