Folks, Morbius is not a good movie. Trying to talk about movies is worse than ever in the Twitter critic era, where snobbery against the hugely popular superhero genre runs rampant, countered by an equally ir꧒ritating insistence that Marvel 🤪movies are high art and just as worthy of Best Picture nominations as The Power of the Dog or Licorice Pizza, all wrapped up in the relentless hype train and the nuance-less divide that grades movies as excellent or terrible, with nothing in between. Morbius, however, has pulled off a seemingly impossible feat - it has united the entire film community. Casual or cinephile, insufferable or reasonable, Marvel or DC, it does not matter - 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:everyone agrees Morbius sucks, and that's magical.
For my sins, I went to see Morbius on its opening night, with only around ten other people in the screening. Half of those ten was made up by a group of five teenage boys who frequently left their seats to grab extra drinks and snacks while the movie played, so compelled were they by what was unfolding on the screen. It's just not very good, for reasons I'll get into, and I don't think it's worth intellectualising that much. There is a good movie within the Morbius canon - that Guardians of the Galaxy became a megahit proves comic book standing matters for very little - and there are flashes of it being told here, but the fact remains that the movie is not good. That does not mean, however, that we can't enjoy it.
Spoilers for Morbius follow.
For any holdouts for the Morbius fandom, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:like that somehow-ve꧒ry-real Discord server, I did not go into Morbius wanting to hate it, I'm a fan of Jared Leto's other work (Joker notwithstanding), and I'm not just hating on it for 'clout', whatever you feel that catch-all deflection of words you disagree with means. I saw it on opening night - I've paid my dues. There's a scene where Morbius' superhuman speed allows him to rapidly ascend a ten storey staircase by leaping up the centre, but then a cop running up the stairs at normal speed manages to catch up with him by the time they reach the roof. Not only catch him, but take him in, even though Morbius is, you know, Morbius. There's also some major issues with the pacing and resolution, we're mostly told of Morbius' plight in a single voiceover montage, while other characters drift in and out of the film as needed. When Morbius and villain Milo's childhood doctor goes to visit Milo, we see him be mauled and drained of blood, but in the next scene he is able to call Morbius while slowly dying. How could he possibly have done this?
Right at the end, Morbius plans to kill Milo, then himself, to end his curse of vampirism. Only he decides not to, and the credits roll, then in a post credit scene he's apparently happy and healthy (therefore likely living off human blood, which he spends the entire movie swearing not to), and ready for a villain team-up, despite being constantly presented as a hero. Not to mention the fact he finds his lover sprawled on a glass ceiling lit up equal parts in green and red, despite a major theme of the movie being a choice between blue and red, Matrix style. Everyone also calls human blood 'The Red', which is an objectively hilarious thing for everyone to just unilaterally agree to.
Worst of all is that everyone in the movie has already seen the trailers. 'Morbius is a vampire' is never questioned by anyone, from the moment it becomes the vaguest of possibilities, it is accepted as complete and utter fact. However you slice it, Morbius is a bad movie. But bad movies are still fun.
Leto, for example, is getting an unfair amount of flak in my view. He's not stretched to Dallas Buyers Club levels here, obviously, but he does what he can with the script and for all the movie is terrible, it's not because of his wooden performance. What little plight there is to be felt, we feel it. Likewise Matt Smith's Milo is one of the worst written villains since the MCU f💜irst elevated comic book cinema. Trapped in a terminally ill state since childhood, unable to venture out into the world, yet rich and as powerful as he is powerless, Milo should be a fantastic character. He is right to be angry about the world, but as he hoards wealth and funds criminal activity, he also causes a lot of its problemꦯs. He should be layered and fascinating, as Killmonger was. Instead he turns into a vampire, disco dances, and dies.
Morbius feels like a throwback in all the worst ways. It's difficult to remember how bad superhero movies were before Iron Man changed the scene forever. There were a few precursors (Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman Begins), but most of the time we had Ghost Rider, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, and Hulk. Hollywood didn't seem to know how to make a great, or even a good superhero movie. These days, the Marvel formula provides a crutch, but what's most disappointing is that Morbius uses it. It features a diametrically opposed villain, fast-moving CGI fights, a wise-cracking hero with some meta humour, and via the post-credit scene attempts to connect everything up. Despite that, it feels like the mid-'00s superhero flicks that I thought we'd all moved on from. They don't make 'em like this anymore, and for good reason. But if you miss the bad old days, Morbius has got you covered. At the very least, you'll have a good time.