Morbius Movie Review – Misjudged Supernatural Flick

Morbius is one of the first Sony movies to dive into the supernatural. Morbius focuses on Michael Morbius essentially living this life as this smart man whose life goal is to create a cure for a rare blood disease-preventing him and his friend, Milo bodies from creating blood.

We see Michael Morbius experimenting on bats. Now there have been mixed reviews for not only the trailers but the movie itself. I’m not listening to anyone’s review, I decided to ignore the good as well as the bad and form my own opinion on the movie.

If you haven’t watched the movie, we have created a spoiler-free zone which is our overview part of the review. This is where we talk about the movie in general, I have separated the page when it gets to the actual super spoilers so you are safe on the article…for now.

If you have watched the movie then as always, I hope you enjoy my thoughts on this.

Overview

One of the main issues about this movie that people either complained about or tried to tell me about was the CGI. They spoke about it being insanely bad and just not correct for a budget of this size and I can see why. However, I only noticed it in certain scenes, mainly the Matt Smith scenes. This was not a major issue for me.

Another issue was the story and I fully agree. With an origin movie, you need the story to be captivating, intriguing, and written very well, this wasn’t the case. The movie had a run time of nearly 1 hour and 40 minutes and I felt like this could have had the same amount of time as Venom 2.

For what we do on Comic Universe, we can not stay off social media as we might potentially miss any news or announcements so we have to go on and try to avoid spoilers or anything like early reviews, this movie was flooded on my timeline about it being the “worst movie ever” and “It’s funny that Jared Leto was in the worst DC movie and now the worst Marvel movie”, that’s fair, it’s peoples opinions but it kept my excitement for the movie to how it was, I have to disagree with some of the stuff I’ve seen on social media.

While the story lacked, the action and characters truly made up for this, especially Michael Morbius. Jared Leto played him incredibly well. I think for an origin movie, this was fine. Any and if this movie gets a sequel I think it will step up the story, as well as the action.

In general, the movie was fine, it was nowhere near the worst movie ever or anything like that. I remember how Venom 1 got absolutely trashed when that was released and now people love Venom and it’s two movies so I hope this goes the same way.

I do, however, Jared Leto deserves some for his acting in this movie. Especially when he watched the CCTV cameras and saw what he did. I like Jared as an actor and I do fully believe he only gets hate because it’s “fun” to do so.

Story

For me, the story felt like it was missing something, I can’t say what but it was. The story felt bland, the typical “guy with disease turns into a monster by wanting to cure himself” story and with a character like Morbius, it’s technically the only thing you could have done.

We’re thrown right into it. It felt rushed. While some scenes were needed, some scenes were not. Like the nightclub scene with Milo. We saw him enter, stare at a girl, and then it cuts away to another scene and we see the aftermath on the news.

I will admit that at some parts of the movie, it was boring, bland, nothing truly to keep me invested. In those moments, I always found myself doing 1 of three things, looking on TikTok, Twitter, or just looking around my room.

I will admit, towards the end, the story did pick up which is disappointing because it should have and could have been fluid throughout and it just wasn’t. I don’t know what happened with the story but they should have checked this while the major delays were happening.

Characters

Now, let’s move on to the characters. To be honest, I have a couple of issues with the characters in this movie and it’s not truly bad or even that actor’s fault. Firstly, we’ll mention the good. Jared Leto as Michael Morbius is fantastic casting. Jared brought life to the character of Michael, as well as bringing the bat out in Morbius. I liked everything about Morbius in this movie.

Matt Smith as Milo was 50/50 all throughout the movie for me. While he was a decent character, he made an even better villain, the only thing that let him down was a few pointless scenes as well as the CGI on some shots. I do like how we got to see his behavior just slowly change, I think part of the anger was still locked away from his childhood.

Now, the bad. Tyrese Gibson as Simon Stroud could have been such a great antagonist… if he was in the movie for more than around 15 minutes. I would have liked to get to know his character more throughout the movie.

The rest of the cast was average, no one truly did anything to stand out among each other. That’s all I have to say about the rest of the cast.

For the full cast list, you can visit IMDB by clicking here.

Hype

For me personally, the hype for this movie did die a little bit when I watched it simply because the story is average. I think with the delays, I tried my best to not let that affect me and my hype as much as it did with Black Widow but I do think that had a part in it being like this.

In terms of my hype against the public, I think some comments are correct while others are just outright wrong. I think the hype is still somewhat there and maybe the hype for Morbius will rise in the coming months/years, similar to Venom 1.

Favorite Moments

Alright, I only had a few favorite moments from the movie. The first obviously is the dark, gritty, brutal, and bloody scene on the ship with Michael first turning into Morbius. I loved this scene because it showed just how brutal Morbius could be if he truly wanted to. Nothing could stop him on that boat, the only thing that did was Martine. Mercenaries couldn’t handle him.

My next favorite moment was Michael Morbius just having fun and testing out just how much and how long he could last with the artificial blood in his system. The CGI in this scene was amazing and I loved the effect of him using super speed.

The next moment would be the end fight. Essentially brother vs brother, only one of them can walk away. This scene was great, from the moment Milo used Martine, I knew the only way to stop him was to kill him. Morbius had to do what he did, and that would have been so painful for him to do because he wanted to save Milo and in some ways, I guess he did.

Dislikes

Obviously as mentioned previously, some parts of the movie had some bad CGI. I think some of the scenes, mainly some of the faces Matt Smith did could have been CGI’d a little bit better to make him look better as a vampire.

Boring scenes that were not needed like the nightclub scene with Milo, the scene in the cafe with Morbius, and a few others. I feel like these could have been replaced with more action or more impactful scenes that tied with the movie.

Another dislike I have is not exactly about the movie, but more so the director, Daniel Espinosa. This man directed this film, Sony trusted him to do so, and even before the film had come out, he went on Twitter and was giving away spoilers for the movie? Why would you risk your reputation by doing this?

Recommend?

Would I recommend this movie? Honestly, I don’t know. I think if you want to go to the cinema to see it then do so, don’t let the negative reviews sway your mind, do what you want. I will say if you are swayed to not see it in cinemas then wait until the blu-ray is released and watch it then.

Verdict

Honestly, not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. Yes, some scenes are boring and the story is lackluster but they have given life to Morbius on the big screen in his live-action debut and Jared Leto gave an incredible performance as Michael Morbius and has actually made the character interesting.

Rating: 6.4/10

Morbius is available in cinemas worldwide. You can visit here for more information on Morbius.