Watching – Morbius

It’s a comic book movie so I had to watch it one way or another, catching it on streaming while doing house chores so I can’t swear that it had my full attention. I will say overall, I expected worse but found it entertaining at times despite a number of speedbumps. The plot is pretty trope heavy and predictable. A good portion of the special effects were more distracting than entertaining (it’s like Venom 2 – Carnage all over again!). Jared Leto was surprisingly subdued and even had moments of humor in his brooding performance while the grandstanding over the top angry madness of Matt Smith was extremely on note for a comic book. Finally, I actually enjoyed the musical score by Jon Ekstrand (who is mostly known for foreign language films but I look forward to hearing more).

The opening didn’t give me much hope, with some horrible science, even compared to comic book science, and some mean nasty traits attributed to bats like being piranhas of the sky who can strip down a cow to bones in minutes. Also the bat tank in the lab is horrible, with no roost or hiding place for the bats who just continue to flap about continuously every time we see the lab. The intro plods on as we get to see what a brilliant child Michael Morbius was and his relationship with Milo / Lucien, another child suffering the same rare disease as Morbius.

In short order, we get the radical cure for Morbius in which he goes on a berserker killing spree before coming to his senses and erases the record of his being there. Cue the training montage of exploring awesome new found abilities and confronting the horrific side effects – the need for human blood (the red stuff as the blue synthetic blood is limited in it’s usefulness, conviently color coded for tracking when it’s Morbing Time!) It’s a bit Jekyll and Hyde as this point as he has little memory of what happens in his blood induced frenzies.

Milo learns of Morbius’s good fortune and is naturally upset that there will be no sharing of this cure. I think we all see what’s coming here with the inevitable turn of Milo into another ‘living vampire’ who views the world as his oyster and the humans his cattle. I might have to watch it again just to see if this disdain for humanity at large was there from the beginning but Milo’s lifestyle certainly belonged to someone of wealth and taste.

Of course, they must fight and the romantic lead must be endangered. The fights were brute force more than anything else, and sometimes it was difficult to see any detail in the clouds of ‘speed smoke’. I’ll grant that the basic fight choreography at least fit the fact that neither of them were trained martial artists, just formerly bedridden anemics now given the super power of abs etc. The finale gives us hints for other movies, potential sequels, and even a proposed cross over but based upon it’s poor reception none of that is likely to happen anytime soon if at all.

Would it have done better as a made for streaming series? Probably not. There isn’t much plot to spend over 6 to 8 episodes. It’s an adequate origin story with the usual beats played out (25 minutes to back story, a brief training montage to show off basic powers and abilities, 53 minutes in we get to see the villain flex his muscles and present a threat that forces the hero into action, 20 minutes of being on the run and an initial confrontation with the villain and the remaining 20 minutes for the final battle and sequel hooks).

The makeup effect of the ‘living vampires’ got the job done and bear a passing resemblance to the comic. The shifting back and forth from cadaverous pallor to merely pale shut in gave visual cue to the state though there was no real sign of it affecting the strength et al of the vampires, just a means for them to mingle with the public.

The celerity effect of a wispy aura of smoke (usually the same color as whatever Morbius is wearing) really bothered me. It wasn’t speed lines as it just floated around him as he moved. It wasn’t him turning into mist as far as could be interpreted.

Initially I didn’t care for the ear ripple as part of the strange echo-location effect, and once again it was misty but overall, it wasn’t a deal breaker and I took it as a nod to the ears of the comic book version and the misty soundscape fit the motif and it made it distinct from other effects like Daredevil’s sonar sense.

How does it compare to what I recall of the comic book character? Some hit and some miss. Morbius has always been one of tragedy, a common theme in many Marvel characters. Fellow Spider-Man rogues gallery Lizard / Curt Conners is another victim of science that was meant to help people (starting with the scientist himself) and he is far from the only one. The Living Vampire tag was one that was to skirt around the comics code of the day (and also why the 90s cartoon version had leech like holes in his hands as the means for draining life force and not blood).

Over time, the comic book Morbius does gain some degree of control over his vampire side but still seeks to cure himself, though there are numerous examples of him losing control and even being replaced by the zombified version for a while. For the overall look, the very 70s costume isn’t used and that’s not a bad thing, though instead of the flying squirrel flaps of the costume, the movie version glides in the backdraft of bats (really? I mean the aesthetic of him in a cloud of bats as kindred beasts is pretty cool but him riding in their wake is probably a step too far for me at this moment). Any mesmeric abilities are untouched upon in the movie version, again probably for the better.

Word is that Jared Leto’s method acting was less disruptive this time around compared to say his brief stint as the Joker where he made life horrible for others and ranted about his disappointment in not being the star of Suicide Squad. It wasn’t an Oscar performance nor would I expect it to be. Morbius is a very pulpy character and it would have been easy for Leto to go over the top once more or claim some sort of Shakespearian interpretation of a man caught between choosing life at the cost of others yadda yadda yadda … And Matt Smith as the villain dines heartily on his lines and chews the scenery magnificently. This isn’t the complexity of David Tenant’s Purple Man. This is something straight out of Deacon Frost’s playbook in the original Blade (1998) or maybe even a little bit of David from Lost Boys (1987) living un-life to the fullest.