By Nicole Jide-Ojo – Student Journalist
Morbius is Marvel’s newest origin story, directed by Daniel Espinosa, starring Jared Leto as Dr. Michael Morbius. Morbius is battling a deadly disease and has been working on a cure to save himself and his best friend Milo, played by Matt Smith, who happened to have the same illness as him. Morbius researches bats and performs a risky experiment that cures his disease but leaves a gnarly side effect of him craving blood all the time. He accidentally becomes an uncontrollable vampire when his craving for blood is high. Milo sees that his friend has cured himself, and he is willing to take the cure regardless of the outcome. The entire storyline after those events is just a battle between Morbius’ attempt to reverse what he had done and Milo trying to block the process.
The movie was quite disappointing. It is predictable and does not have a solid storyline, not to talk of growth from the characters. Some scenes are unnecessary, and others are misplaced. They seem to have spent too much time on the fight scenes. Still, even at that, those scenes aren’t remarkable due to the excessive use of CGI and basic cinematography, which doesn’t excite the audience.
However, the movie wasn’t terrible. It was highly entertaining watching Milo. His performance as the classic ‘best friend turned evil’ trope was steller. I would see the movie again solely because of Smith’s acting. His witty line delivery wrapped with the bitterness he felt towards Morbius translated very well.
Overall, Marvel’s Morbius had the opportunity to be an excellent origin story. It was even expected to be pretty good since it is technically in the Sony Spider-verse. Hopefully, the future for Marvel’s Morbius gets better.
Rating: 2/5