(Late to the Party is a feature in which I watch a movie for the first time long after the discourse surrounding it has died down. Some spoilers should be expected.)
I mentioned to a friend some time ago that I thought I was getting burned out on comic book movies, and that burnout came much quicker than I thought. It started happening back in 2021: even with faster access via streaming, it took me months to get around to Black Widow and Shang-Chi, and I still haven’t seen Eternals. By the time I watched Spider-Man: No Way Home, it had already long been spoiled for me, but I didn’t care. While I did go to the theater to see Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder, I’ve yet to see Wakanda Forever, and I completely forgot the next Ant-Man movie is coming out next month. Maybe I’ll see Guardians of the Galaxy 3? I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet.
It’s not them, it’s me. I enjoy comic book movies, particularly the run leading up to Endgame. But that’s the thing: it feels weird to have a movie called Endgame in your franchise, and then keep going. Viewing the upcoming MCU and DC releases just for 2023 alone gives me the same sensation as looking at a very long grocery list. Something that’s supposed to be light entertainment shouldn’t feel like an obligation. Marvel is starting to feel like it's spinning its wheels, DC is on its third attempt to scrap everything and start over, and who even knows what the hell is happening over at Sony, which owns Spider-Man and occasionally loans him out to Marvel, while also building an entirely separate franchise. In less than five years, I’ve seen three different versions of the Joker in three different universes. What day is it? I don’t know, but here’s something called Blue Beetle, whatever the hell that is.
Admittedly, I watched Morbius expecting it to be bad. Not a single person I knew had a kind word for it. Though it did fairly well upon its first week of release, it had the worst second-week decline for a comic book movie since 1997’s Steel, a remarkable accomplishment considering I didn’t think anyone saw Steel. Even its defenders were lukewarm at best about it, offering up “it’s not that bad” as high praise.
And you know what? They’re right. Morbius isn’t that bad. At least if it was bad, it’d be interesting. There’d be plenty of meat to pick off its bones for bad movie connoisseurs. But it’s not, it’s boring. It’s so boring that I initially misspelled its title as Morpheus in the above paragraph, and didn’t notice until later. Let me clarify: I just watched it two days ago, and I’m already having trouble keeping its title straight.
Perfectly cast as a creepy guy who never seems to age, Jared Leto is the title character, Dr. Michael Morbius, supergenius. Don’t know much about Morbius as a character? Well, too bad for you, because the movie is extremely economical in the information it provides, evidently in the expectation that Morbius superfans would fill in all the blanks. All we really know is that he’s one of the smartest men in the world, and has a rare and deadly disease. What disease? It’s not important, call it Schmuckeldorf Syndrome, it’s certainly more thought than the screenwriters put into it. The symptoms are a pallid complexion, and occasionally needing crutches1 when the script calls for them.
Morbius has spent much of his life researching a cure for Schmuckeldorf Syndrome, funded by his rich orphan friend Milo2 (Matt Smith), whom he met as a child when they were roommates at Dr. Jared Harris’s Special Hospital for Pale Young Boys. I’m pretty sure Harris’s character has a name, but since no one mentions it obviously it’s information not worth retaining. With the help of his colleague Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), Morbius makes a breakthrough in his research by splicing human DNA with that of the lowly vampire bat, Mother Nature’s most misunderstood creation.
While vampire bats do subsist entirely on blood, they rarely bite humans. Mostly they feed on cows and horses, and are so small that their “prey” usually doesn’t notice them. But never mind that, here getting a zotz of vampire bat DNA turns Morbius into a raging monster, who stalks people with his supersonic hearing and murders them. It also mysteriously makes him super ripped, even though bats aren’t known for their Charles Atlas-like physiques3. It doesn’t “cure” his disease, exactly, because he has to keep drinking blood, but it temporarily neutralizes the effects of it, and that’s good enough for Milo, who, unlike Morbius, sees no issue about killing people to keep himself well. He steals the formula for the treatment, forcing Morbius to play a game of good vampire vs. bad vampire, while trying to avoid the cops, who are completely stymied by his clever disguise of a hoodie.
I guess my first question about Morbius is how do you cast an all-timer like Jared Harris in your vampire comic book movie and make him a sacrificial lamb with barely any screen time? Apologies for the spoiler, but if you can’t guess that Dr. No-Name is doomed from the minute he appears, clearly you’ve never seen a movie before. In fact, there’s not a single moment in Morbius that even the casual filmgoer won’t anticipate long before it happens, right down to the “surprise” reveal at the end that a third character, thought to be dead (uh huh, sure), has also gotten the Morbius treatment. So predictable are these plot beats that they’re not even explained, like why Milo does such an abrupt heel turn, or what Morbius means when he says he’s “not that kind of vampire.” Why explain anything when you could add more scenes of Morbius and Milo kicking and punching each other?
Here’s an idea: make Dr. No-Name the villain, a rival scientist also trying to find a cure for Schmuckeldorf Syndrome, and Milo the sacrificial lamb. I can’t guarantee it’d be a good movie, but it’d be a better one, and I’m not even a professional screenwriter. Plus, you’d actually give Jared Goddamn Harris something to sink his teeth into (pun absolutely intended) instead of standing around looking concerned while waiting to die. But that might require some effort, and the stink of “low effort” permeates every frame of this. Morbius is the most flaccid vampire movie you’ll ever see, with bloodless kills and a negative chemistry “romance” that only results in a single peck on the lips. At least Matt Smith tries to juice things up a bit, but even his hammy villain who just loves to kill bit is something we’ve seen dozens of times before, in much better movies.
Speaking of villains, the fact that Morbius is canonically a villain is treated like an afterthought, in a post-credit scene that feels like it was written on a cocktail napkin. That it’s supposed to get the audience excited for a Sinister Six movie (which will either never happen, or they’ll try to make three different versions of it, like Fantastic Four) is laughable. That it was thought to be good enough for the audience in the first place is insulting. Supposedly Morbius had been in development in one form or another since 2000 (which would explain the tiresome use of the “bullet time” effect), but the final product is exactly what comic book movie detractors think they all are: factory-grade processed junk, meant to be sucked up like Morbius’s artificial blood and then forgotten.
Though his character has presumably needed them his whole life, Leto wobbles around on the crutches like Lee Evans in There’s Something About Mary, who, if you recall, was playing someone merely pretending to be disabled in order to get into Cameron Diaz’s pants. This is all the more hilarious (or offensive, depending on your point of view) when you realize that famed Method actor Leto probably thought it was incredibly brave to “realistically” portray such an unfortunate soul.
His real name is Lucien, but in the film’s most inexplicable moment, after introducing himself to a young Morbius, Morbius tells him that he can’t be bothered to remember his name, so he’s going to call him Milo, after the last boy who roomed with him (and presumably died). Evidently Milo simply accepted this, and at no time in their 25 years of friendship ever asked Morbius to call him by his actual Christian name.
Unless you’re talking about those weird giant bats in the Philippines that look like they have abs.