Morbius Sucks, or The Value of Bad Movies

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An incompetent marvel

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Sometimes a picture like Sony’s Morbius comes along that is so horribly nonsensical, it makes one appreciate mediocre yet understandable films. 

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Confusion kicks this movie off with 25 minutes of flashbacks and scenes of people standing around talking. This is usually called exposition, which alludes to scenes meant for sharing crucial information. Nothing of the sort happens however, the first part only wastes your time.

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All you need to know is Michael Morbius was born with a crippling disease and he’s a genius trying to cure himself and his equally sick childhood friend Lucien AKA Milo (two names, stupid story), played by Max Smith.

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It’s a real slog waiting for Jared Leto to finally take his experimental bat serum and transform himself into a vampire.

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Once Dr. Michael Morbius finally turns, we finally get something recognizable, a classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation.

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Dr. Morbius in living vampire form cannot control himself and ends up killing some armed guards. He vows to fix his new condition before murdering anyone else, but is stifled because it requires him to feast on blood. Luckily, he’s famous for creating artificial blood. So he drinks the fake stuff to keep him calm, but with the stipulation that it won’t hold his sanity forever, eventually, he needs real human blood to live.

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The dilemma of kill or be killed sets up an interesting premise.

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The problem is Morbius NEVER makes that promised and obligatory decision.

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He gets by on artificial blood and doesn’t kill anyone else. It’s truly the worst cop-out I've seen in a while.

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Lifeless movie, Living Vampire

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Dr. Morbius is supposed to be seen as a good guy but he tortures some petty criminals at one point and steals their stuff. The studios probably thought this pushes him into “antihero” territory.

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I think it just makes him an even more inconsistent character. You never really get a grasp at what Leto is trying to do with the character. I blame the writing more than him.

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So Morbius gets weird superhuman powers and echolocation that makes everything look all wispy, without being a traditional demonic vampire. The action scenes that feature his abilities are underwhelming. The best parts are in the trailers. It’s only for a couple of minutes at a time and most of the CGI is laughably bad.

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Also, whenever Morbius pangs for human blood, his face resembles something close to his original comic book form, but if it was a corny TikTok selfie filter.

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It becomes obvious that his childhood friend is going to be the bad guy.

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Sure enough, Milo/Lucien gets a hold of the Morbius serum. He uses his powers to kill a lot of people without remorse and then tries to kill Dr. Morbius… for some reason, I still can’t figure out.

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Instead of a scene where the antagonist lays out his motivations, we get one where he does an extended cringe dance in front of a mirror. An interesting choice, to say the least.

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Oh yeah, and Dr. Morbius’ assistant and confidante becomes his girlfriend too. Or maybe she was already romantically involved with Morbius? I don’t know, man. The exposition didn’t do its ONE JOB.

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Remember how unwatchable the close-up fight scenes in the Transformers franchises were? Now imagine them with weird fuzzy effects, falling through mid-air, in the dark– That’s the climactic fight scene between Milo and Morbius.

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There are several useless plot points like Morbius being framed for Milo’s killing spree and the two incompetent and unfunny comic relief cops hunting him down. They don’t seem surprised at all when the good doctor suddenly flies up 100 ft in the air and then gives himself up on the roof even though guns never bothered him before.

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Michael Morbius, at one point, says “you wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry”. The chortle I released was the only audible audience reaction heard during the whole movie.

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It was predictable that this movie was going to suck balls. The trailers reused only a couple of its few lame action scenes, and memes poking fun at the low quality of Morbius hit the internet before it came out. (I’m someone who believes most memes are true btw.) 

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Still, it’s incredible at a base level just how much it did wrong. Especially considering the extended time due to delays they had to make it right. Movies with studios this big behind them have no excuse for being this lame. They could have at least just made it an action fest.

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Morbius feels like a shitty 90s comic book movie that time forgot. 

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A good movie makes you forget about the structure of a movie.

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This stinker leaves you counting the number of things that were missing and needlessly added.

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If anything, it’s a valuable lesson in how NOT to make a movie. In that sense, I sort of enjoyed this movie. 

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After all, everything tastes better after a pickle

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RATING: F

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-Alex