Morbius

Morbius is a 2022 American superhero horror film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel. Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing, it is the third film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU). Directed by Daniel Espinosa and written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, it stars Jared Leto as Dr. Michael Morbius alongside Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal and Tyrese Gibson.

Plot
Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder and determined to save others from the same fate, Dr. Michael Morbius attempts a desperate gamble. While at first it seems to be a radical success, a darkness inside of him is soon unleashed.

Why It's Not Morbin' Time

 * 1) Just like Fant4stic, the sole reason this film was made was just so Sony Pictures could still hold on to the Spider-Man film rights and not lose them to Marvel Studios with whom they are sharing the rights with. Another reason is that they could make their own cinematic universe that competes with Marvel.
 * 2) The film went through developmental hell for 2 years. It was originally going to be released on July 10, 2020, but production was halted due to COVID-19 leading to its release date to be pushed back to March 2021, then October, and then on January 2022 before finally moving its official release date to April 1, 2022. Despite all of its delays however, the crew behind the film didn't seem to use these opportunities to improve upon its flaws. This leaves us with something that was far from worth being delayed for so long.
 * 3) One problem with the movie is that despite the runtime being at 104 minutes, the pacing is dreadful.
 * 4) *Many scenes (especially the first act) feel like they drag on for an hour rather than 30 minutes. In most movies with a unique concept, the movie in question introduces said concept 10-15 minutes into the movie whereas Morbius only becomes a vampire 30 minutes in. By that point, audiences will be bored out of their minds to the point where they'll be winded out or even leave the theatre before the movie's over.
 * 5) While it is great to see that Michael Keaton reprises his role as Adrian Toomes/Vulture five years after mh:greatestmovies:Spider-Man: Homecoming, many people were confused as there's very little explanation to how the Vulture ended up in Sony's Spider-Man Universe and it only brings lots of plot holes.
 * 6) *Apparently, this is due to Doctor Strange's second spell in mh:greatestmovies:Spider-Man: No Way Home that erases everyone's memories of MCU Peter Parker, except that's not how the spell works. The spell was meant to return people from outside the MCU back to their home universes. How did Toomes get pulled out of his universe?
 * 7) *The problem is that Toomes is from the MCU which means he should have stayed in the MCU with only his memories of Peter Parker erased instead of being transported to the SSU, making it a massive plot hole.
 * 8) *The scene in which he recruits Morbius doesn't make sense. Why would he want to take down not just a guy he doesn't know and who had no impact on him but a guy from an entirely different dimension? And Morbius blindly agrees to team up with him?
 * 9) *In Spider-Man Homecoming, Toomes had the chance to destroy Spider-Man by revealing his identity but chose not to and decided to move on with his life. Now he suddenly changed his mind and wants to defeat Spider-Man? Unless a part of him wanted revenge.
 * 10) Uninspiring and ugly visual effects and aesthetic especially the Spider-Man graffiti that’s quite blatantly a screenshot lifted directly from one of the suits from 2018’s Spider-Man video game which included Sam Raimi's Spider-Man.
 * 11) The CGI for vampire Morbius' face is very sub-par and it looks like it was from a video game cutscene on seventh-generation game consoles like the mh:awesomegames:PlayStation 3 (Though what were saying is just an exaggeration).
 * 12) * Even Morbius' vampire face rather looks like a fusion of a bat and a monkey together.
 * 13) Bad release date: The fact that this movie was released on April Fools' Day makes this movie a bit more concerning than it already seems. This was also released a week before mh:greatestmovies:Sonic the Hedgehog 2 which is currently doing a lot better than this movie (US$141 million in box office returns for the latter against the former's US%126.4 million as of April 11, 2022). Not helping is that in Europe and Australia, both were released on the same day, further emphasizing their bad timing.
 * 14) *Because of the famous ironic memes about the movie, Sony announced on June 3, 2022 that the film would return to 1,000 theaters weeks after its initial theatrical and digital release, showing that they are ignorant and unaware of the irony about the memes.
 * 15) Jared Leto was a poor choice for Michael Morbius and his performance is subsequently terrible since it sounds like he was sleepwalking and lifeless. The fact that Leto is not using his signature method acting doesn't help either.
 * 16) In the comics, Morbius was of Romanian descent, but Leto does not have that and doesn't use the Romanian accent.
 * 17) Clichéd, lame and unexciting action sequences especially the scene with the boat. Also, several action scenes are shot in the dark. This makes it even harder to tell what's going on. The constant slow-mo doesn't help either since they end up grinding the battle to a halt.
 * 18) Very atrocious and groan-inducing dialogue that sounds like it was written by teenagers or a child. Examples of these are "I. Am. Venom." clearly tying into Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (And also just ridiculously out of place) both distributed by Sony/Columbia Pictures. Also, "Is daddy cross" is so stupid some may find it ironically funny.
 * 19) Terrible and lazy writing from Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless who are also known for writing the 2016 movie Gods of Egypt.
 * 20) There is a shameless sequel-bait ending. And due to the movie critically flopping, such plot would likely never be resolved.
 * 21) Awkward editing in some scenes like the scene where Morbius flies into the train.
 * 22) *And to top of that, the filming location where Morbius fights Milo at the NYC Subway was actually filmed in the London Underground in the UK similar to Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
 * 23) Weak direction by Daniel Espinosa, the same person who directed Life which is a better movie than this and was also distributed by Sony/Columbia Pictures.
 * 24) The PG-13 rating means that a lot of the violence was downplayed. In fact, it easily could've been rated R instead of PG-13. While the PG-13 rating did work for other movies such as the James Bond films and, to an extent, Venom and its sequel since it did manage to have a lot of realistic violence that is not downplayed all the time. However, it's not here since it made the action sequences pretty lame and unexciting, specially since Morbius is a vampire which would have been epic if it had gore and blood.
 * 25) Sony apparently edited out the part of the end credits scene where Adrian Toomes mentions Spider-Man in future screenings of the movie in theaters which makes it even more confusing than it was before. It also shows that Sony doesn't know how to handle their own standalone Spider-Man movies. And if they were going to edit the end credits then they should've just remove the end credit scene all together or left it the way it already is.
 * 26) Apparently, Sony re-released the movie in the theaters recently due to all the "Morbius Sweep" memes on Twitter, thinking that fans want it to be very successful and believe it or not they're now thinking about making a sequel, despite the movie now bombing twice which shows Sony didn't learn anything, and even Jared Leto got involved in the Twitter memes by posting a meme himself, which now killed the meme since they're considering making a sequel for meme culture reasons, and that's not a good idea at all!

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Matt Smith does a good performance as Milo as he brings a lot of energy and loudness to his role as the villain.
 * 2) There are some good action scenes which are easily the most entertaining parts of this movie.
 * 3) Great score by Jon Ekstrand who is also a frequent collaborator with the film's director Daniel Espinosa.
 * 4) Despite being generic and sub-par, Morbius's vampire makeup looks pretty good.
 * 5) There are some decent characters like Dr. Michael Morbius himself, the Vulture (despite being out of place as mentioned above) and even Milo (presumably due to how these characters aren't flanderized at all).

Reception
Morbius has received highly negative reviews from critics and audiences alike. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a critical approval rating of 17% based on 104 reviews with an average rating of 3.8/10, while it holds an audience score of 71% (possibly from reverse review bombing due to the Morbius Sweep meme, causing it to have such a score). The website's critical consensus reads "Cursed with uninspired effects, rote performances, and a borderline nonsensical story, this Spidey-adjacent mess is a vein attempt to make Morbius happen.", while the audience consensus reads, "Morbius isn't telling the most original story, but cool visuals and fast action keep things entertaining.". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 36 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

Jeremy Jahns gave the film a "dogshit" rating.

Isaacarthy also gave Morbius a 2/10 rating, saying "it was easily one of the worst superhero films I've ever seen in my life!"

Penguinz0 gave Morbius a 15% in the Moist Meter and said: “it was like going back in time, where all superhero movies suck”

the negative reception of the film generated an ironic meme culture surrounding it on the internet, which led Sony re-release it into 1,000 theaters on June 3, 2022, and it made 85000 dollars in the box office, average of 82 dollars per theater.

WatchMojo ranked it Number 15 on their Top 20 Worst Superhero Movies list.

Despite this, it is considered to be "so bad, it's good." and it shows.

Videos
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Trivia

 * Despite the negative reviews, the film spawned the "Morbius Sweep" ironic meme and "It's Morbin Time", both of which convinced Sony to rerelease the movie again to 1,000 theaters in June 2022.
 * There was even a meme that claimed Martin Scorsese who said that superhero films are not cinema has changed his mind after seeing the film.
 * There were several attempts to bring Morbius to the big screen since 1998, including joining the Blade franchise and having a solo film produced by Artisan Entertainment, neither of which ever came to fruition. After announcing plans for a new shared universe of films inspired by Spider-Man related characters beginning with Venom (2018), Sony began developing a film based on Morbius.
 * In various social media such as Discord and Twitch, this movie was heavily pirated to have the viewers watch the full movie on platforms as a prank due to the ascending internet meme.
 * After Morbius got pulled from theaters again for it's re-release, a petition on Change.org wanted to put the film back in theaters for a third time with the claim that "We were busy that weekend".