Let’s get a few things out of the way before discussing the actual movie. Morbius is a movie stuck between a rock and a hard place, and by that I mean the Marvel and Sony. Though Morbius is a Marvel character, he’s in the Spiderman franchise, which is owned Sony. So, here we are with yet another not-so-Marvel movie, taking after Venom. Morbius also began its filming years ago, since 2019 before Avengers Endgame was released. Morbius’s release date has been rescheduled a grand total of 6 times, which explains why the movie poster’s weird date release date for January 2022, which got rescheduled to the start of April.
And out of all dates to choose, it had to be on April Fools, which just doesn’t seem like a good debut date for anything serious. To make matters worse, the actor for Morbius, Jared Leto, previously played the much hated (and cringe) rendition of the Joker. Seems like that factored heavily in the relatively low score the film got from Rotten Tomatoes (which you really should take with a grain of salt most of the time) as well as the not so promising (but still okay) weekend box-office. Nevertheless, I thought Morbius was a good movie. For one, Morbius as a character has never been seen before on the big screen (compared to the various remakes/rethinking for Spiderman, Venom, Batman, the Joker etc.), which is a breath of fresh air to me, to see something completely new.
Morbius as a a superhero/antihero character is also unique in that he is seriously sick, (due to his mysterious blood disease). This pushes him to look for cures via intense scientific research (via vampire bats; this should differentiate him from Batman, who simply likes bats and from Spiderman, who simply got bit by a spider), not just for himself, but for others. Even when he obtains his powers (by injecting himself with a vial containing portions of vampire bat dna), which cures him of his disease, grants him superhuman strength, exaggerated echolocation, flight, and control over vampire bats, his morality is maintained, as he considers his power a curse. He requires blood to maintain that state, and though artificial blood keeps him going, it is losing effectiveness, which will soon require him to require real human blood.
The villain of the series, Milo/Lucien is also compelling, even though he suffers from a few cliches. For one, Milo is Morbius’s childhood friend (which is almost always a villain in most movies it seems), and became evil as a result of power and greed. But the source for that greed is unique, since it stems from the fact Milo was also sick like Morbius. What person dying and in pain wouldn’t want to be cured, (more so if they knew the powers that came with Morbius’s cure). Morbius had tried his best to keep Milo away from the ‘cure’, citing the serious downsides and flaws, but Milo would eventually find a way to inject himself anyways, thinking Morbius was greedy to keep it for himself. Milo, now with a God complex, now that he is no longer sick, but much stronger, thinks Morbius is underselling himself, and that the cure is a gift, but is also deserved.
Finally, another element I enjoyed was the lack of many cringe moments, which has become the norm in recent films, such as with Loki, the recent Spiderman films, Venom, Antman, Deadpool (I give a pass on that because it’s Ryan Reynolds), which is caused by some need to forcefully inject comedic humor, which I think is overdone just like Disney’s need for plot twist villains. It just felt nice to really focus on a movie without being interrupted by excessive dumb moments.
