Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (June 20, 2022)
When Iron Man launched the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” (MCU) in 2008, it attempted to tie together that publisher’s characters. However, because Marvel sold the rights to these properties to a mix of parties, some didn’t fall under the MCU umbrella.
This meant Spider-Man, arguably Marvel’s biggest character of all-time, stayed separate from the MCU. Sony owned the rights and pursued their own movies via 2002’s Spider-Man, its sequels and 2012 reboot.
With 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, Spidey – now played by Tom Holland, the third actor in the series – finally came home to join the MCU. However, Sony maintained the rights to the character, so the Spidey trilogy that began with 2017’s Homecoming stayed with them, even though it involved the MCU.
Not only does Sony possess the option for Spidey, but also they maintain a hold on related roles such as Venom. That character led to two fairly successful spin-off films, and 2022’s Morbius allowed another Spidey-related personality to reach the big screen.
Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) suffers from a blood disorder that leaves him perpetually weak and disabled. Possessed of a brilliant mind, he devotes his life to a cure, and after he invents a revolutionary synthetic blood, his research focuses on aspects of vampire bats.
Eventually Michael comes up with a therapy that melds human and bat genes, and he uses it on himself. While this cures his condition and indeed grants him superhuman abilities, the treatment turns him into a literal vampire who needs to drink blood to survive.
As I’ve noted in other reviews, I became a voracious fan of superhero comics in the early 1980s. This only lasted a couple years, but over that span, I consumed literally everything Marvel and DC published.
If I ever saw Morbius across that period, I don’t remember him. If I read the character’s Wiki entry correctly, it sounds like the character remained largely dormant from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, so I probably missed him.
This left the role pretty much unfamiliar to me as I entered Morbius, but this doesn’t mean I entered the film without expectations. No, because Morbius received terrible reviews, I held out little hope that it would offer a rousing adventure.
Still, you never know. I was one of approximate 12 people who enjoyed 2015’s much-loathed Fantastic Four, so I held out hope that Morbius would work for me.
And for a little while, I kept that optimism alive. As we explore the character’s roots, Morbius manages just enough intrigue to keep me involved across the first act.
However, Morbius becomes less and less interesting as it goes, largely because it develops massive, gaping plot holes. Actually, “develops” doesn’t quite seem accurate, as the film suffers from narrative gaps from the start.
Often when movies suffer from significant story-telling issues, these occur because the filmmakers lacked the time to fine-tune their work. That becomes a particular problem with expensive “tent pole” projects, because studios set release dates and force the flicks into multiplexes, ready or not.
No one can make that excuse for Morbius, as the COVID-19 pandemic repeatedly delayed it. The production wrapped in June 2019 but release got postponed repeatedly, a factor that allowed for reshoots and polishing.
With that in mind, the incoherence of Morbius becomes all the more perplexing. The filmmakers had nearly three years after the main shoot concluded to create a quality movie and this mess ended up as the result?
Make no mistake: Morbius offers a tale with little logic or narrative clarity. It often feels like entire chunks of the script went missing and the filmmakers just shrugged and decided to work around it.
Often I complain that movies run too long, but in the case of Morbius, the end product seems too brief. I say so not because I wanted to spend more time in the film’s universe but because I think more exposition would allow the flick to at least seem more coherent and to flow better.
Morbius barely bothers with any attempts to explore the characters. For instance, we know that sick young Michael (Charlie Shotwell) gets stuck in a care facility for many years, but we learn nothing about his background.
What happened to his family? I don’t know, as the movie doesn’t seem to care.
This doesn’t change as the film progresses, so we remain stuck with an adult Michael about whom we know only the most basic of basics, and none of the supporting roles receive exploration either.
A lot of this doesn’t even make sense in the film’s universe. For instance, we see that young Michael gets to know a lot of other sick kids over the years, and so many of them die that he just calls them all “Milo” rather than learn their actual names, an obvious attempt to avoid emotional attachments.
However, when a new “Milo” named Lucien (Joseph Esson) nearly perishes on the spot, Michael drops the “Milo” conceit and uses the boy’s real name. The two develop a bond that persists over the decades.
Logically, adult Michael would call grown-up Lucien (Matt Smith) by his real name, but no: he remains “Milo”. Not only that, but everyone else who knows Lucien refers to him as “Milo” as well.
Perhaps a deleted scene would allow this concept to make sense. In the film as released, however, it just seems weird, and the movie suffers from plenty of other perplexing choices.
As I watched Morbius, I made a mental note of the various weird cuts or scenes that felt incomplete. I figured I would mention these specifics in the body of my review.
However, Morbius comes with so many perplexing transitions and sequences that seem abrupt or unfinished that I abandoned these plans. I’ve already devoted a lot of words to this movie, so additional details would fall into “flogging a dead horse” category.
Suffice it to say that Morbius largely fails as a movie. While not the worst comic book adaptation I’ve seen, it becomes such a mess that it never really connects.
Footnote: two tag scenes pop up during the end credits. In an unusual touch, both connect and don’t stand alone.
These point toward a sequel. Nothing else appears after the second sequence concludes.
