Morbius Review

by Allie Vasserman

Reviews

April 29, 2022

Morbius (2022) is the most recent superhero action movie that is part of the Marvel-Sony movie collaboration, featuring a lesser-known character. It is directed by Daniel Espinosa, and it stars Jared Leto as Dr. Michael Morbius, Matt Smith as Milo, Adria Arjona as Dr. Martine Bancroft, Jared Harris as Dr. Emil Nicholas, Tyrese Gibson as FBI agent Simon Stroud, and Al Madrigal as FBI agent Rodriguez.

The movie opens with Dr. Michael Morbius as he travels to a cave in a jungle in an effort to capture a species of bats, which he hopes to use to cure his rare blood disease. The movie then jumps to flashbacks where young Morbius is living in Greece while being cared for by Dr. Emil Nicholas. This is where Morbius meets his lifelong friend Lucien, whom he nicknames Milo. The movie then jumps back to the present day, where Dr. Morbius’ colleague, Dr. Martine Bancroft, finds out that he has been experimenting with the bats’ DNA. After Morbius uses the bats’ DNA to create a cure for his rare blood disease, he tests the cure on himself. The cure does work as expected, and he officially becomes Morbius, the living vampire. Morbius now has certain superhuman powers. With the help of Martine, Morbius has to fix the problem he created because now he needs to drink blood in order to survive. Some synthetic blood that he has created satisfies him for the present, but he does not know how long it will be until he needs human blood.

This movie is one hour and forty-five minutes long, but it still feels short and unfinished. The plot feels predictable. The phrase “we are the few against the many” is a key line that recurs from the beginning to the climax of the movie that establishes a theme of the movie but didn’t need to be repeated so many times for viewers to get the point. Morbius’ origami bats, which point to his new identity as a vampire, are another recurring symbol that feels overused. I especially dislike the ending of the movie; I feel like the movie was cut off just before it could have a proper and satisfying ending. The movie has one plot twist, but it’s so obvious that you see it coming. I also have some mixed feelings about Morbius’ vampire superpowers. The superpowers look cool, but they remind me of the animated film Hotel Transylvania. I think that the Marvel-Sony collaboration that brought us the latest Spider-Man trilogy and the two Venom movies could have done better. 

I did enjoy watching Morbius’ struggle between his morals as a doctor and his desire to feed on human blood to stay alive and maintain his enhanced physique. I also liked the relationship between Morbius and Martine. I think that the two characters have chemistry between them that will possibly be explored further in future sequels. I also liked the post-credit scenes because they seem to foreshadow a Sinister Six team-up against Spider-Man coming sometime in the future.

Out of all of the Marvel-Sony superhero movie collaborations we have had so far, I think this is the weakest one.  But I look forward to seeing future movies featuring more obscure characters in this new multiverse.