Does Morbius Suck Or Is It Flying High?

On the latest episode of this movie review podcast, I am not gonna recommend this one.  I like super hero things, and I like horror things.  Hypothetically this sounds like it would be a power blend of both genres with the latest Marvel adaptation, Morbius.  That being said, this movie was not it.  And honestly, kind of what you expected from the trailers.  There is a dance scene that tries to rival the Spider-Man 3 monstrosity, but that was devastating in the best possible way.  This movie just has a bit of an uninspired lead and a lack of direction.  There are a few good enough moments, but that is not enough sadly.  But come check out my full take on this movie and let me know what you thought on social at NickNack_IC or NickNackMovies on Twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok.   And if this wasn't the best there was, it was not, what movie are you most looking forward to coming out next?

Transcript

Nick Nack Goes to the Movies Pod S3E7

-Intro/Jingle

-It is time loyal listener for Nick Nack to go back to the super hero genre on Nick Nack movies.  Now I wish it was under better circumstances.  Moon Knight has only just begun on Disney Plus, the DCEU is all over the place, and we don’t even have a trailer yet for Thor Love and Thunder.  At least we have the new Doctor Strange and Scarlett Witch movie to look forward to.

-But before we get to those, we have the latest of these Sony Marvel things.  Maybe everything is connected somehow to the MCU.  Obviously, I want the Netflix things to all be canon, yes even Iron Fist can be along for the ride, even if I care way more for the other 4 main heroes.  But this kind of lives more into the universe with Tom Hardy’s Venom among other characters.  So yeah, let’s talk about Morbius.  You have probably heard the pretty negative reviews across the board.  And while I may not be giving this my first ever 5 stars ranking on Letterboxd, it may not be the most positive review I have done on here.  But let’s find out if this vampire movie truly sucks, or if by some miracle it flies higher than expected.

-Actors

-So, the lead role is played by Jared Leto, you all knew that.  I really had to think about what I had seen him in and if anything, really jumped out at me.  I still haven’t seen that newer blade runner, I know I am super late on that, so I can’t speak to that.  And while I did not hate his Joker, I fear we will never truly get to see what the role was like in either the Ayer cut of the suicide squad or the remaining TBD entries of Justice League that will probably never see the light of day.  So for me, he is not a draw at least.

-I would say the same about Matt Smith, but I know he has a strong role in Doctor Who, I just haven’t seen anything in that world outside of Torchwood, mostly for John Barrowman.  But he will be in the Game of Thrones spinoff which I will sure be watching and apparently one of those weird movies I have always wanted to see, Pride and Prejudice and zombies, I’m sure it is a masterpiece.

-I don’t think Tyrese Gibson, from Fast and Furious fame, added a whole lot to the movie.  At least his counterpart Al Madrigal, the Daily Show, had some actually funny lines from time to time.

-I think one of the main things I was disappointed in has to be the lack of Jared Harris.  An actor many of you may only be marginally familiar with, but he was one of the stronger parts of a highly underrated movie, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Mad Men, The Expanse, The Terror, and the Sherlock Holmes movies, allegedly he will be the third one.  He was only barely in this movie and that is a shame with how good of an actor he is.

-Lastly, yes Michael Keaton shows up on screen.  Not it is not in the run time of the movie itself, just a few post-credit scenes.  This will be a huge issue that I will talk about at the end, but let’s start talking about this story where it begins, at the beginning.

-Main Episode

-To kick things off, we have some interesting things about a few kids with a shared blood illness, with some super heavy-handed bullying that, while possible, seems aggressively over the top.  Kind of like that same opening scene in It Part 2.  Just a bit unbelievable.

-The foreshadowing scene of Michael Morbius being a genius and saving his friend Milo was nice to see.  So, the intro isn’t bad, but it isn’t amazing either.

-Milo doesn’t get a ton of development or rhyme or reason as to who he currently is or who/what he becomes.  But I do enjoy his more exciting personality, not only when he is an adult who is trying to get his cure and start his own life.  Even when he is cured his personality shines through, he is fun, and honestly, this movie is fun when he is able to let loose, even if his motivations for becoming an evil vampire don’t always make sense.  Sure, they try and set up he had anger problems, but with him being bullied they don’t really make him out to be a troubled soul, they just want him to be evil for the sake of the movie, and it just happens for the sake of happening and plot progression.

-There are times Jared Leto’s Morbius seems to matter and have a care in the plot and world.  The hospital child scenes were nice, and him talking to adult but still sick Milo, also nice.  But for most of this movie, I barely care about Jared Leto and I don’t think he really adds anything to the role the majority of the time.  

-The base blocks of the plot make sense, guy has blood disease, tries to sci-fi his way into making a cure, a career out of it in fact.  His whole deal is making a blood alternative sustainable and eventually his mad science makes blood things into, you guessed it, vampire people.  

-And I have seen a bunch of vampire movies in my time, especially recently enough.  Some comedies, some more action based.  There was that plane one on Netlfix, What We Do In The Shadows on FX, and some more cheesy ones like Mom’s got a date with a vampire on Disney plus and the lost boys on Netflix.  So with all of that, somehow this hybrid super hero vampire movie doesn’t hit the same vibes.  Even the original Blade trilogy or the show with Sticky Fingaz had more going on combining the two genres.  So yeah, this was disappointing.

-The Doctor Strange sequel speaks of combining horror and the super hero genre from the mind of Sam Raimi.  And being in the true unquestioned MCU, and having Patrick Stewart, I am pretty stoked for it.  

-I will not lie that having some existence of Michael Keaton as Vulture, while it made no sense, was something drawing me to Morbius.  DON’T GET FOOLED, IT DOESN’T MATTER AT ALL TO THIS MOVIE.  And his existence makes no sense with the rules established in the latest Spider-Man movie, and sending Keaton to the worse version of this Marvel universe makes no sense as well.  He has connections to Tom Holland and his origins are based on Avengers things.  HATE HATE HATE THIS, don’t ruin good characters, and have reasons for doing this Sony Marvel people.

-Sorry, I am mostly not thrilled with this movie and the eventual outcome of having Keaton in a jail, seeing the no way home purple sky, and then he just is in the wrong universe, like the reverse of the Tom Hardy stuff at the end of that movie, which bummed me out to not move Hardy over, but Sony just won’t let stuff go.  And while I wanted to save this till the end of the episode, it doesn’t make sense for him to team up with Morbius.  He was a villain by circumstance only, he wanted to help his family, yeah, he turned to crime, but he was easily one of the better MCU villains of all-time.  He wouldn’t just be evil for no reason, which is kind of what Morbius feels like.  His character arc only moderately is believable for me.

-To the movie now that the important part is out of the way.  So, he becomes a vampire with bat testing, and yeah, he keeps bats like Batman in Batman Begins, and Morbius uses them similarly enough.  As a distraction and weirdly as a method of execution, Batman never did that, but there are some similar set-piece moments in this movie that exist in that one too.

-He becomes vampire person and gets some cool enough powers, but most of the special effects are just not so fun or good looking.  The bat powers make sense, although Morbius learning to fly was kind of dumb.  The whole world getting fuzzy when he is in sense mode does not look amazing.

-So, the big thing is of course his battle to drink blood.  And watching Morbius hunt as a vampire is fun to watch, we don’t get a lot of it, but it is there at least in the beginning on the ship when he gets his vampire powers.  Also, it should be mentioned he gets these powers by making science instead of just getting bit by bats or something like that.

-There are some federal agents and running from the law things, not that it is ever all that interesting of an angle outside of the occasional Al Madrigal jokes.  You knew Matt Smith was gonna become a Vampire.  And he is fun in the role, the setup has been shown before, oh the cure is too dangerous, I think this was exactly shown in the worst of the Spider-Man movies, amazing spider-man 2.  The Goblin and Electro were both horrid in those, thankfully Jamie Foxx was done much better in the eventual end of No Way Home.  

-But if you get past that as well as the villain and hero being mirror copies of themselves.  Yes, this happens in MCU movies too, but it is done better in those.  Matt Smith is fun as a violent and hungry villain who dances around and just has gleeful fun, kind of like Carnage in the second Venom movie here.  But while this is fun, the trajectory spiraling downward doesn’t make sense for his character at all.  The same problems I had at times with the Uncharted characters.  But those were decent enough, as the movie was too.  Here I didn’t even have source material to go off of that I choose to read, and I was still disappointed with nothing going into this.

-So unfortunately, Milo becomes unredeemable, attacking the barely used Jared Harris and immediately going after the romantic lead played by Adria Ah-Row-Nah.  I haven’t really brought her up, and honestly, it is because she doesn’t have a whole lot to do.  The chemistry between her and Leto doesn’t really exist and she feels at times more like a end goal for him and a means to an end instead of a developed character.  She feels fully like a one-dimensional romantic lead.

-When she dies, it doesn’t hit hard, and they pair these back to back.  And yeah, they make Morbius drink her up, his first conscious time feeding on a person, and I wish they had gone all out making Morbius lose everything and having him have to kill his last friend and link to his past life.  

-The fight is all over the place, not the best, not the worst, but they had Morbius kill off his friend soon enough after, and they also have his romantic lead come back to life, and somehow be a vampire through sharing blood and not with the shot, so more rules going all over the place.  The end I feel like has him being a villain and somehow this gets muddled with this idea of him being a good guy.  Tonally I came out of this confused.  I liked some parts of this movie, but as a whole sum, it just wasn’t for me.  I am nervous this will become a larger part of spider-man and the MCU and I will have to care about all of this unlike the last Matrix which I am just going to ignore.  So yeah, Morbius kind of sucks.

-So, onto my Letterboxd ratings.  I had this at 2.5 stars to start immediately after.  Maybe I wanted it to be better, maybe I needed some time to be more honest.  So, what did I actually put this at?

-Letterboxd ratings

- Morbius – 2 stars

-wrap and call to action 

-So that was the episode and unfortunately, not the highest rating for Morbius, yeah it did kind of suck.  And I am annoyed with what they are trying to do with Michael Keaton and taking him out of the MCU and putting him in the Sony Spider-verse, thing.  So yeah, not happy at all about that because he does deserve to be in the better Marvel universe.  I think Tom Hardy’s Venom could thrive in the MCU, and I would love to see it, but not this Vampire.  This thing sucks.  It is not unwatchable, but it is just not what I would want it or any Marvel project to be.