Morbius - April 5

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and that is especially true with the extended family angle. Still, I did give as well as I got, so I should not complain too much, therefore let us move onto ‘Morbius’. What can be said about that film?

It is an origin story, and it is done by Sony, rather than by Disney/MCU, hence its’ lackluster appearance and delivery. The original ‘Venom’ film had the same problem, but it had Tom Hardy and his antics as the titular duo to counteract this; ‘Morbius’, instead, has Jared Leto, who is a good actor, sure, but, apparently, this is not enough.

One may argue that it is unfair to compare ‘Morbius’ to something like ‘Shang-Chi’, which is also an origin story but is done much more glamorously and colorfully and so on, but the problem is that the same has plagued ‘Venom’ – the original film, and ‘Carnage’ wasn’t that much better. Let us elaborate.

In MCU, origin stories tend to introduce other elements and Easter eggs quickly on; Phase 1 may have had its’ problems, but by the time the first ‘Avengers’ film arrived they got past it…by making a bigger, better show than what ‘Sony’ is doing with its’ Marvel characters so far. The first ‘Venom’ film had a script that was rather confusing, in a threadbare sort of way, and ‘Carnage’ was really a reboot of the first film, one that simplified its’ characters, especially Eddie, Venom and Ann, and not in a better way, I would say. What was consistent in that aspect of the SUMC-franchise were aliens; ‘Venom’ and co. were dealing with them and only with them. Hence why AoS was so good in the MCU franchise in that they dealt not just with Hydra, but with other threats; pity that it had outlasted its’ promise and ended in a whimper rather than a bang, no matter how much the cast and the crew tried to pretend otherwise. By contrast, ‘Morbius’ has started with a whimper – it is a variant vampire movie with some ‘Batman’-like aesthetics that don’t really mesh.

…Speaking of DC and ‘Batman’, the Caped Crusader had tangled with vampires, primarily Dracula, who comes and goes to both DC and Marvel at will, but he usually does not become infested with the virus of vampirism himself, and he usually is not associated with vampires at all. Hence, ‘Batman’-like imagery in ‘Morbius’ isn’t very appropriate and it doesn’t work too well either.

The vampire angle itself… it is one of the reasons as to why I remembered AoS – just as AoS had worked the Hydra threat into the ground, so has the cinematography in general done with the vampire threat; Dracula, at least, has panache and authenticity on his side, a certain gravitas, if you will. Michael Morbius – not so much.

Again, it all comes down to the treatment of the character – I first met ‘the living vampire’ during the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon series, (which was a Spider-Man centered MCU, cough). The show had Peter’s origin story done canonically – he was bitten by a radioactive spider and became Spider-Man – and then in S2 his blood and DNA began to mutate, and he began to search for a cure. Enter Morbius, who was Peter’s fellow student in the university, who discovered Peter’s blood sample and began to experiment with it, trying to figure out as to how Peter was able to mutate it, cough. Enter the lab’s vampire bat, (one of  - did I mention that Dr. Connors, aka the Lizard, was running the class in that universe?), who also got irradiated by the lab’s technology, and then it bit Morbius, turning him into ‘a living vampire’, just as a spider turned Peter into Spider-Man. You have to admit, this does sound more glamorous than what Sony did with Morbius in the movie. So what?

So, the problem with ‘Morbius’ is that there’s no Spider-Man in it; whereas Venom did evolve to be an independent character with their own thing, (did you follow ‘the King in Black’ story arch, in particular?), so they can carry their own movie, and even several, but with Morbius this isn’t the case – ‘the living vampire’ has rather faded into obscurity by now, so people aren’t too impressed or excited by his arrival on the big screen, and the trailers didn’t make things any better, unfortunately. People went into theaters – or got to see ‘Morbius’ otherwise – with low expectations already, and the show gave them just that – a variant vampire movie with very little Marvel content, even less so than ‘Venom’ did – and ‘Venom’ does have more oomph in Marvel than ‘Morbius’ does. (See above). So, what is left?

Unfortunately, nothing. Sony’s ‘Morbius’ movie delivered what it promised to do – to introduce Morbius, the living vampire into the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters and that what it did to do. Sadly, the delivery portion of the plan was underperforming, but that may not matter in the end – Sony is not licked yet, according to some news. Ah well, good luck to Sony, then!

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!