North Texas Daily

Riding off the adrenaline of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” we have gotten yet another “Sonyverse” film, this time coming to life in the form of “Morbius.” Saying this movie came to life in any regard may be an overstatement, but it certainly is not as bad as some are saying.

The main problem with Marvel’s bloodsucker is the oversaturated comic book movie formula. We have seen movies like “Morbius” play out hundreds of times at this point, so while it may be average in certain areas, the lack of distinctiveness tends to suck the life out of audiences.

Dr. Michael Morbius suffers from a rare blood disease and has devoted his life to making sure a cure is found. As you can imagine, he goes to the extremest of extremes to make sure his goal is met. Using bats as the center of his cure, something goes horribly wrong, turning him into a bloodthirsty superhuman.

Trying to commend the cast in this movie is going to be like running a marathon with flip-flops on, but let’s try and give it a go. Jared Leto is our main character and I genuinely have nothing else to add to this sentence. He plays Michael Morbius in a serviceable and safe way, adding virtually nothing to make him stand out from the hundreds of other superhumans we watch on the big screen. Leto is associated with more joked about characters than a normal actor probably should be, but at least in this film, he is without green hair or an over-the-top Italian accent.

Matt Smith may be the only redeeming performance from this movie. He plays Milo, Morbius’ opposite, and when Smith gets to ham it up as much as possible, I actually found myself having a little bit of fun.

I am truly baffled by how average this movie was. Every good moment was equally met with a bad one. Every time I cringed and laughed, I also cringed and squirmed. There is a real science to how this all went down and I am convinced it was not by accident.

Some of the action would be genuinely intriguing, but then something like the words not matching with the actor’s mouth would happen and it would lose me completely. I know it is an extremely strange nitpick, but it happened so many times and the movie did not even try to hide it. This movie also struggles with the common superhero trope of the villain being an identical version of the hero and I really hope the trope has finally run its course.

There was some good to this movie and I want to try my best to highlight as much of it as I can. I will always find vampires extremely cool and this film knows a lot of people feel the same. Morbius learning to tame his new gift came with some fun sequences and the purple-flowing effects left by his quick movements were pretty to look at.

I wish this movie would have learned from flicks like “Venom” and fully leaned into the camp of it all. If this movie came out ten years ago it probably still would not be entirely great, but at least we wouldn’t be burnt out on these origin stories like we are now.

I will probably never think of this movie again, but it does not mean I am going to use all my energy hating on it. This is not the worst movie ever made and when it comes to the repetitiveness superhero films often present, “Morbius” fits right in with a majority of the passable ones. It is perfectly okay to watch a movie and think how little of an impact it will have on the rest of your day.

Everyone likes to act in extreme ways when it comes to rating movies, but I find comfort in forgetting the whole plot of the film on my walk from the theater to my car. “Morbius” has become the newest movie people latch onto as a joke, so at least there is some enjoyment happening. As long as people are having a good time, you won’t see heavy complaints from my end.

Final Rating: 2.5/5

Featured Illustration By Erika Sevilla