Morbius

Honestly, did anyone expect Morbius to be a good movie? The trailers didn't suggest anything of the sort, and after how Venom turned out, it's not a bad thing to be wary when it comes to Sony comic book movies. So talking about disappointment wouldn't make much sense, the film exactly as crappy as most of us probably expected. Like Venom, Morbius feels like a comic book movie from the days when Ben Affleck as Daredevil and Nicolas Cage as Ghost Rider were goofing around in theaters. Simple entertainment with a simple story, realistically about six characters, no surprises, no ideas and nothing worth paying attention to. Moreover, Jared Leto is no Tom Hardy and while he doesn't spoil anything here, his Morbius simply isn't an interesting character, but that's more the fault of the writers who occasionally try to bite on some attractive themes, anti-heroics and a potentially interesting relationship between the main character and the villain. In the end, however, they ignore all that and serve up a boring film that has nothing to offer in real terms. And when they start to try for some kind of bigger story at the end, it still doesn't work. Oh, and the vampire faces are pretty ugly. (03/30/2022)

I watched it out of compulsion because I'm sick of comic book movies, and how can I say this, somehow I survived unscathed. Mostly surprisingly intimate, holding back, taking place mostly between interior walls in the space of a few rooms. It doesn't have any eye-candy moments that make it memorable, it's just the whole inoffensive definition of mediocrity. Jared Leto was okay, as long as he didn't just make himself look like a vampire thanks to the ugly CGI, he acted artfully and wasn't the weakest link. It just that unfortunately it has a ridiculously cringing Matt Smith, and it has Tyrese Gibson looking like he's expecting diarrhea at any moment the whole time. The final CGI fight, drowned in darkness, is forgotten within five minutes. Like the whole film, actually. (10/24/2023)

While it doesn't match the qualities of its MCU neighbors (but it's better than Black Widow and not much worse than the first Doctor Strange), Morbius is definitely better than both Venom movies combined, and that's mostly because of the characters. It’s a shame that they didn’t go further with the horror, because with this film and this protagonist they could have afforded it. I like that the trailers I saw didn't give everything away and actually kept the villain completely hidden until the theater, for example. And while he's not a great villain, he's a good one, and his motivations are presented in a fairly believable way, though in a slightly limited space. The action scenes aren't many, but they are there, and they don't turn into a cluttered mess thanks to slowing down time at the right moments. Jared Leto made a good impression on me in the lead role, I trusted the headstrong hero who refuses to give up his humanity. For me it was nothing ground-breaking, but a pleasant and inoffensive film, where, unlike the aforementioned Venom, I didn't have to be ashamed of what on earth I was watching. (04/01/2022)

I am Manbat! Jared Leto in a strange variation on a dime-a-dozen Spiderman baddie & unknown Batman baddie is seriously bad. The senseless decisions, unclear motives and questionable rules for the functioning of this entire newly created universe are pitiful. The idiotic screenplay manages even to kill any potentially intriguing storylines and the nicely set up hero/baddie relationship is destroyed unexpectedly amateurishly. The obviously heavily cut ending with the footage of Keaton indicates that Morbius is for teenagers and movie consumers who don’t like to use their minds. (09/02/2022)

Regarding the qualities of Morbius, there is a lot of mention of the Venom 2, which was qualitatively on the edge of average and subpar, but at least it tried to be funny and sometimes it succeeded. Morbius doesn't know who and what it could (and should) impress with! Espinosa's film is neither action-packed, nor scary, nor – as I mentioned – funny enough. It has a punishingly short running time, so you watch a sequence of randomly arranged scenes, all without causality or logic. In terms of visual effects, this is a dud by contemporary standards – the vampire look is more creepy than horrifyingly scary. Even the “smoke moves” of Nightcrawler in X2 were better done than Morbius and co. Jared Leto tries his best, but the bad script trips him up every step (or jump), while Matt Smith was downright embarrassing. The rest of the cast was just sort of pointless filler. I'm curious to see if Morbius will appear on the big screen again after this below-average piece, given the (rather) tepid title end credit scenes. (04/02/2022)