Everyman Bristol
Morbius was a Spider-Man villain: he first appeared in Spider-Man 101, the one where Spidey accidentally grew six arms. He was the first Comics Code approved vampire, by virtue of not actually being a vampire at all. He sucked blood due to a scientific curse, but was not one of the living dead.
Morbius the Living Vampire, it said on the cover, which is a little like Caspar, the Not Dead Ghost
Well, you can work out just about every plot beat from the premise. What we're watching is an absolutely standard Marvel Comics origin story recast as a vampire movie. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) injects himself with the experimental vampire DNA serum and finds himself turning into a very strong but very terrible monster that he can't control. Very like Bruce Banner. Don't make me hungry, he says, very nearly: you wouldn't like me when I'm hungry. Milo, his nice friend from the children's hospital, also injects himself with the bat-potion; but while nice Morbius tries to live off artificial blood and avoids killing people; nasty Milo goes around slaughtering all and sundry. He absolutely loves being utterly evil, and so, quite clearly, does Matt Smith.
I have no idea what the status quo of the character in modern Marvel mythos is. The current movie version is like X-Men and Deadpool and and Venom, a Marvel Movie which stands apart from the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's not a classic, but it's great, if slightly dark, fun.
So: two little boys have two little congenital blood defects. One little chap has a brilliant scientific mind, goes to America, becomes a doctor, and turns down the Nobel prize. His playmate becomes fantastically rich through arguably nefarious means. The brilliant one thinks he can cure their terrible and invariably fatal affliction by splicing rare south American bat DNA into humans, and....Well, you can work out just about every plot beat from the premise. What we're watching is an absolutely standard Marvel Comics origin story recast as a vampire movie. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) injects himself with the experimental vampire DNA serum and finds himself turning into a very strong but very terrible monster that he can't control. Very like Bruce Banner. Don't make me hungry, he says, very nearly: you wouldn't like me when I'm hungry. Milo, his nice friend from the children's hospital, also injects himself with the bat-potion; but while nice Morbius tries to live off artificial blood and avoids killing people; nasty Milo goes around slaughtering all and sundry. He absolutely loves being utterly evil, and so, quite clearly, does Matt Smith.
The hero's surrogate brother becomes his mirror image and his dark side; the brothers have to fight and the one person the hero must kill is the one person in the world he doesn't want to kill. I can't help thinking that I have come across this plot somewhere before.
The film looks sumptuous. I could probably live without ever seeing another fight using "bullet time"; but the imagery of Morbius and Milo falling through space, nearly dissolving into mist, while whacking the hell out of each other is really quite impressive. There is a breathtaking sequence in which Morbius allows himself to be propelled through a subway tunnel with a train only a few feet behind him. It's considerably darker than standard MCU fare: the sequences in which Morbius is in prison, blamed for killings actually committed by Milo, did a good job at conveying an impression that an American prison is not a very nice place to be. The final sequence, in which Morbius apparently controls all the bats in New York felt suitably climactic, but the film avoids the post-9/11 apocalypse syndrome that has infected a lot of the MCU output. No-one saves the world or universe: the story remains essentially about the sibling conflict between Michael and Milo. Which is, to me, what superhero stories ought to be about.
I think my only real beef was with the post cred: a character who most of the audience (including me) would have been completely unable to identify beams in from a parallel world and suggests that Morbius starts a new superhero franchise with him. This confirms all my worst fears about multi-universe cross-overs. Morbius is "like superheroes only vampires"; and that idea stops being fun if you put it in a universe where actual superheroes are ten a penny.
Despite its 15 Cert and its horror iconography, in many ways Morbius is a much straighter-down-the-line Marvel Comics tale than a lot of what we are seeing the mainstream Cinematic Universe doing. A hero misuses science; acquires a blessing which is also a curse; and makes a moral decision about how to use it. Another person has the same accident but makes a different moral choice. With great power comes great etc. etc. etc.
The film looks sumptuous. I could probably live without ever seeing another fight using "bullet time"; but the imagery of Morbius and Milo falling through space, nearly dissolving into mist, while whacking the hell out of each other is really quite impressive. There is a breathtaking sequence in which Morbius allows himself to be propelled through a subway tunnel with a train only a few feet behind him. It's considerably darker than standard MCU fare: the sequences in which Morbius is in prison, blamed for killings actually committed by Milo, did a good job at conveying an impression that an American prison is not a very nice place to be. The final sequence, in which Morbius apparently controls all the bats in New York felt suitably climactic, but the film avoids the post-9/11 apocalypse syndrome that has infected a lot of the MCU output. No-one saves the world or universe: the story remains essentially about the sibling conflict between Michael and Milo. Which is, to me, what superhero stories ought to be about.
I think my only real beef was with the post cred: a character who most of the audience (including me) would have been completely unable to identify beams in from a parallel world and suggests that Morbius starts a new superhero franchise with him. This confirms all my worst fears about multi-universe cross-overs. Morbius is "like superheroes only vampires"; and that idea stops being fun if you put it in a universe where actual superheroes are ten a penny.
I doubt if any sequel will happen, and the movie stands on its own two feet. I cared about the characters more than I did about anyone in the Other Bat Themed Movie; and I was able to actually keep track of what was supposed to be going on. I don't know if the world actually needed a movie version of a relatively obscure Marvel horror comic, but I had a fun two hours in the cinema.
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