Studio: Sony/Marvel
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Writer: Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless
Producer: Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, Lucas Foster
Stars: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, Tyrese Gibson
Review Score:
Summary:
A gifted doctor searching to cure his rare blood disorder develops a serum that turns him into a deadly living vampire.
Review:
We’ve all seen ballyhooed blockbusters with big stars bomb at the box office before. We’ve seen them earn contempt from critics and belittling laughter from underwhelmed audiences, too. We’ve even seen their dopiest moments turned into infamous memes that immortalize their ineptitude. None of these things are unique to “Morbius.”
When it happens though, you still can’t help but wonder how, exactly, does a major movie backed by so much money fly so spectacularly off the rails that it crashes and burns with the violent force of a nuke annihilating an entire nation? Judging by a trio of trailers featuring footage that isn’t in the film, a collection of completely inconsequential characters, and several strangely structured segues, one can only conclude that confused executives, panicking producers, and two years of second-guessing while waiting for theaters to reopen created a confederacy of dunces whose indeterminate objectives edited “Morbius” into an indistinguishable mess of a movie.
People invent all kinds of angles to justify manufactured anger over the popularity of superhero movies. One complaint contends that there are too many plots where the fate of the planet, sometimes the universe, hangs on how heroes handle a gargantuan threat often hailing from somewhere else in the solar system. Alien invasion. Earth becomes a ticking time bomb. Half of the population wiped out of existence. It’s all just too much.
Well, here’s a paltry plot for everyone who would prefer to see comic book adaptations scaled back to simple stories of Spider-Man punching purse-snatchers or Superman foiling an ordinary bank robbery. Michael Morbius is a genius doctor seeking to cure a rare blood disease that’s afflicted him and his best buddy Milo since childhood. Michael creates that cure by controversially combining human and bat DNA, except the serum mutates him into a powerful pseudo-vampire with uncontrollably murderous urges. Milo doesn’t care about consequences. He’s ready to become a creature as long as it means he’s cured because it will also enable him to… kill a couple of drunken douches outside of a bar?
“Morbius” has some of the lowest stakes ever for something that’s supposed to be an epic event movie. No one tries to take over the city, much less the world. There’s no master plan with a shocking twist, a surprise reveal of a backstabbing turncoat, or a devious conspiracy tied to a secret cabal. “Morbius” only involves one good guy, one bad guy, and a poorly motivated beef between them that tangentially involves some secondary players who could be Thanos-snapped out of existence without any fundamental change to the film whatsoever.
Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal feature as two FBI agents tasked with tracking down Morbius, although their true function is to temporarily pause the plot by questioning a couple of characters who offer no actionable information. The two men do imprison Morbius for a moment, but he escapes in the very next sequence. So when you get to the final scene, which epitomizes the dull duo perfectly by showing them standing still with straight faces as they do nothing but watch a bunch of CGI bats swirl by, try to figure out what impact did they ever really have on anything?
The same question can be asked of Anna, a patient of Michael’s whose credit comes after Michael Keaton’s despite barely being onscreen for one minute, or a limp love interest whose romance with Michael has the heat of an arctic iceberg, or Jared Harris as a negligible father figure who is so detached from importance to the central arc that he can only obtain exposition from serendipitously seeing a local news story on TV. That’s also how Milo clues into a key piece of information, cementing “Morbius” as being so lazy about plot progression that it has no shame in using the same hackneyed device twice.
Reminiscent of both the slim narrative scope and fragrant cheesiness of the Captain America and Fantastic Four flicks from the early ‘90s, “Morbius” plays like a straight-to-VHS B-movie with corners personally cut by Roger Corman, just with better-budgeted polish. Director Daniel Espinosa’s uninspired staging relies on a comically obscene amount of slo-mo in order to squint at the action amidst dust storms of digitally generated debris. Montages like Morbius setting up his lab or Milo dressing in slick suits while strutting and smirking in front of a mirror build incredibly basic bridges. Supposed spookiness comes from stale setups such as flickering lights in a hallway. For a film centered on vampiric villains biting with fangs and slashing with claws, the horror is painfully PG-13 not just in how little is shown, but in how plainly everything is presented.
An awful ending hastily wraps up every remaining thread with Road Runner-like speed as if to echo the audience’s dominating desire, “We can’t be done with this fast enough.” Then after two nonsensical codas are shoved awkwardly into end credits, a wandering mind once again wonders, how did “Morbius” get to such a milquetoast point? Considering the notes, nags, and conflicting indecisions that probably went into whittling down “Morbius” to its crumbled condition, how much worse could the original vision have possibly been? Is a bad movie that only runs 95 minutes really better than a mediocre one that runs north of two hours? Whatever the reasoning, it’s impossible to imagine anyone seeing the final cut of “Morbius” and thinking anything other than, “This is a total train wreck that barely has any reason for being.”
NOTE: There are two mid-credits scenes.
Review Score: 35
At least the movie only runs 70 minutes, though I suppose that extra 10 technically disqualifies it from being a literal amateur hour.