'Morbius' Blows Chunks And I'll Tell You Why
I know a lot of you are seeing the Morbius hate on the internet waves right now, and I want to give you a little breakdown of the movie. One thing I'd like to make clear is that I don't think this is nearly as bad as people lead me to believe. Yes, I think the movie blows chunks like my title suggest but I thought it was going to be unwatchable to the point where it might be considered the worst comic book movie of all time. It's not that. It's a very bad movie, but not the worst or unwatchable. Here is where the movie fucked up:
1. Jared Leto is just not a sympathetic actor. I don’t think he is a BAD actor. He is just not right for any role that requires an audience liking him or feeling a sympathetic connection with him.
2. Every single relationship in this movie was fucking horrible. Morbius and Bancroft. Morbius and Dr. Nicholas. Morbius and Milo. Milo and Dr. Nicholas. All of them were rushed to the point of being unbelievable. Now, it is possible to have a passable movie without building meaningful relationships. But this movie hinged so much on us, as an audience, being invested in those relationships for it to work.
3. The movie style-jacked a lot from the Nolan Batman trilogy. There are points where the score, made by Jon Ekstrand, is an almost 1:1 ripoff of Hans Zimmer's iconic score from that trilogy. Specifically this scene.
There is a scene in Morbius where the titular character steps into a swarm of bats and it hits the EXACT SAME MUSICAL CUE. The movie also took another Nolan favorite, which is the addition of a ton of city-skyline establishing shots. You could also argue that Matt Smith is the ra's al ghul of this movie. Seemingly the one character who understands what the protagonist is going through but reacts in the extreme, forcing the protagonist into a reluctant fight with them.
4. Tyrese Gibson was pitched in the trailers as being part of this movie. He was not. He has all of 15 speaking lines, and his comic relief parter character was unbearable. Both of them worked for the FBI and were totally useless characters because they did literally nothing to effect or drive the plot. Nothing at all.
5. The third act of this movie was rushed as all hell and left the climax generic and boring. The big final fight was such a letdown and the space between that and the actual ending was practically nothing.
6. The post credit scene made no fucking sense. SPOILER ALERT: The post credit shows Adrian Toomes aka Vulture aka Michael Keaton getting sucked into the Morbius universe a la the Spider-Man No Way Home multiverse tears. This does not check out since it was made explicitly clear in No Way Home that those tears were a one way trip. People from other universes got pulled into theirs since they initiated the universe tear. In the second post credit, Toomes tells Morbius that they should team up to beat Spider-Man, implying the formation of the Sinister Six. This also doesn't make sense considering there is no established spider-man in the Morbius/Venom universe, so Morbius wouldn't know who that is. Also, Morbius was very clearly painted as a good guy in this movie! Why would he turn heel just on the word of Toomes???
What frustrates me a lot is that if they removed the terrible childhood scenes, the romantic subplot & Jared Harris and just focused this movie on the friendship between Matt Smith and Jared Leto, then their battle and broken friendship could be awesome! Focus on being good at one thing vs trying to do everything!
He is a full breakdown of the movie from myself, Jeff, Chris and Eddie:
