Morbius Review: Studio Interference Strikes Again!

The third film of the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters after Venom and Let There Be Carnage, Morbius is the first movie in the franchise and stars Academy Award winner Jared Leto in the titular role with Tyrese Gibson in a supporting role alongside Matt Smith. From director Daniel Esposito, the movie begins with Michael Morbius, a biochemist, who tries to fix himself of a rare blood disease. However, when his experiment goes haywire, he inadvertently infects himself with a form of vampirism instead.

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On a side note, the only other Marvel films that I can think of that have gotten as minimal marketing as this one would be X-Men: Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants. Not sure what that means, but it’s something I noticed. But coming back to Morbius, it isn’t great in any aspect. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great either. And after seeing the trailers, it is mind-boggling how cut up this picture was.

It’s only an hour and a half long, and it’s clear that a half-hour was just removed at the last minute by the studio. It’s insanely rushed, and the post-credit scenes are probably the most sloppy of any Marvel flick; I mean, sure, they get you excited for what’s coming, but that does not mean they are inherently good.

Jared Leto, who plays The Living Vampire in the film, gets a lot of flack for being overly eccentric, and while I understand why, I still find him to be a great actor, and I think he does a great job in this feature. The dialogue is actually decent, but the development of characters, including Morbius, is severely lacking, but you can’t help but chalk that up to the fact that so much of the motion picture was torn apart last minute.

Not all of the CGI in Morbius always holds up either, but it’s serviceable for the most part. The action scenes are slick, and it’s intriguing to watch how they utilized Morbius’ unique abilities, but a lot of the editing is very reminiscent of the late 90s and early 2000’s comic book movies and not in a good way.

The third act of Morbius is predictable but entertaining enough. It’s not as bad as you’ve probably heard, but it’s not great. What it does right, it does extremely well, but it’s bogged down by so many post-production trip-ups that it lands itself right into the bin of mediocre to bad Marvel Cinematic Universe and Sony’s Spider-Man Universe movies. All in all, Morbius is an average outing.

‘Morbius’ Rating – 2.5/5

Review by Carder Galluzzo (@the_screen_scholar)