Morbius Is the Most Mundane of Marvel Movies

Morbius is another monster movie where a down-on-his-luck man encounters a strange force that transforms him into an antihero. Venom and its sequel, which exist in the same Sony universe, kind of worked because there was a chemistry between underdog reporter Eddie Brock and murderous alien Venom. Morbius, however, doesn’t have much character charisma—or much of anything.

Jared Leto as Michael Morbius. Jay Maidment

A major issue is that there’s not a whole lot to Dr. Michael Morbius, played with an irritatingly static performance by Jared Leto. Having grown up with a rare blood disease, he seeks to find a cure by any means necessary; he’s had some luck with artificial blood but wants to find a real solution rather than a Band-Aid. He believes the answer may lie in fusing the DNA of bats and humans. Some trials show good results, but when he tries it on himself he essentially transforms into a vampire of sorts, craving blood and flashing sharp teeth.

Michael is very analytical and tries to approach his newfound vampirism with a sternly controlled sense of scientific experimentation. He makes quiet and calm observations, noting everything from the time it takes to maintain control between blood consumption and the increase in his mobility functions. He also restrains himself when he fears he may not be able to control an experiment, protecting himself from others. In other words, vampire powers do not apparently increase his charisma.

Morbius in vampire mode. Courtesy of Sony Pictures

It doesn’t help that Morbius is surrounded by lukewarm supporting players. His colleague Martine (Adria Arjona) is present to be yet another voice of reason, but her say seems to hold little sway over Morbius’s ambitions. She’s also the love interest, but there’s little development of that kind of relationship, and what there is feels more obligatory than a natural build. Michael’s childhood friend Milo (Matt Smith), who shares the same medical condition, soon becomes the central antagonist for encouraging the darkness in the name of cure. However, he’s more or less playing the same type of character as the villain from the first Venom movie. Despite a laughable sequence where a shirtless Smith does a goofy dance as he gets ready for a night on the town, he can do little to improve the dead nature of this bleak comic-book picture.

There’s this constant feeling as though the film is holding itself back from becoming an intriguing horror movie instead of sticking to the substandard superhero structure. Scenes intended to look dark and brutal appear fantastical and flashy—Morbius’s initial assault on some gun-toting bad guys is so smeared with computer graphics it makes his vampiric presence seem more magical than terrifying. The results are more garish than presumably intended.

Matt Smith as Milo. Jay Maidment

While I won’t spoil the connections to the other Marvel movies, I will say there’s a very limp enthusiasm for the future promises of Sony’s top franchise. I can’t help but observe how this world of Spider-Man villains like Venom and Morbius without Spider-Man still feels empty. It’s not so much that the movies are missing Spider-Man’s spark of heroic zingers but that the energy just feels off, with conflicting moralities. Morbius doesn’t really contemplate much of his goals and ambitions, existing more like a passenger in his own story and just kind of shrugging at becoming a vampire.

I was hoping there would be some sense of grounding the character with the presence of Morbius’s father (Jared Harris), who also serves as Milo’s doctor. The potential is there, but it’s squandered for a simplistic confrontation. As a result, there are a whole lot of fill-in-the-blank scenes where I couldn’t help but feel there was something left on the cutting-room floor or nixed from the script.

Michael and Martine (Adria Arjona). Jay Maidment

Morbius feels like the most pedestrian of Marvel movies. It reveals the stock template with little effort to provide a dose of real horror or a break of humor to bring some life to the picture. The result is a lifeless husk that doesn’t carry either the bite of Marvel’s more exhilarating entries or the subversive terror to set it apart.