Director: Daniel Espinosa
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Duration: 104 minutes
Morbius (VOD) – Movie Review
Morbius is a movie that hardly needs any sort of introduction. This new entry in the MCU (albeit the portion that’s owned by Sony) has been getting a lot of negative attention and is often mocked for its entertainment value. Nonetheless, we finally decided to give the movie a watch now that it’s been released outside of theaters, and we have to be honest that we dived in with extremely low expectations. Now, the question remains: was the movie as bad as many claim it to be? Let’s find out below. It’s Morbin Time!
Morbius tells us the story of Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), who has an incurable disease that will eventually cost him his life. Nonetheless, in his determination to cure his illness and many others in the world, he has developed a synthetic type of blood that can be used for all types of blood transfusions. Thanks to this, he has saved countless lives across the globe, and this has also earned him a certain status in the medical world. His newest endeavor to cure his own disease involves bats that have regenerative capabilities. The bats, however, are very murderous and dangerous. Even so, Dr. Morbius is determined to use a new serum that is derived from the bats on himself. While his developed cure works, it also comes with a nasty side-effect: it turns its recipient into a murderous man-bat-like hybrid.
In terms of pacing and flow, a lot feels off. The movie tries to focus too much on visual spectacle and action, while it should actually focus more on its story instead. The film is simply a lot blander than it could have been due to its poor buildup and very lousy writing. It almost feels like the writing team behind this film purposely did a bad job, together with the director. As a whole, the film is still fairly enjoyable to watch; if you look at it like one of those old crappy Jean-Claude Van Damme movies you’ve never heard of before. We understand that this is a totally different genre than the movies of the aforementioned veteran action-flick actor, but it feels like not a lot of thought went into fleshing things out properly, and it sometimes feels like the creators behind this film are doubting the viewers’ intelligence and think the audience will be distracted by the shiny actions scenes.
Jared Leto doesn’t have a spotless track record, and his ridiculous method-acting shenanigans have not played out in his favor either, but we do have to say that the oddball performer fits the role of Morbius. Leto plays a fairly convinceable disabled doctor who ends up becoming the man-bat hybrid creature. Supporting roles have also been handled decently. That being said, the movie mainly revolves around three cast members, namely Jared Leto, Matt Smith, and Adria Arjona. Sadly, due to the horrible writing, not a single character feels fleshed out or interesting. This is, once again, because of the focus on the action scenes, rather than actually doing proper world-building and providing the viewer with interesting backgrounds for many of the movie’s characters.
As we were only given a digital screener for our review, we are unaware of any bonus features that come with a physical copy of the film. We would expect a few extras that revolve around the creative process behind the film, as there are a few impressive scenes present in Morbius. Other than that, a few deleted scenes, a gag reel, and perhaps a few commentaries would also add a bit of value to a DVD or Blu-ray copy.
Conclusion
Morbius is, above all, a fairly bland action movie that wants to do too many things at once. The film tries to focus too much on the action portion and due to this, it neglects the story that could have been fleshed out better. That being said, we weren’t treated to the horrible mess the internet made it out to be, but instead, we were just presented with a boring and forgettable film that you’ll probably only watch once. We found it an okay entry in the same series as the Venom movies, but we mainly hope to only see Morbius again as a side character in other movies. Morbius might still be an okay watch; if you’re a fan of the other Spider-Man-related films.
Morbius (VOD) - Movie Review,
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