Jared Leto ruins another comic book movie.

Morbius may be the biggest waste of time of 2022, especially in regards to superhero movies of the Marvel or DC ilk. It’s also one of the rare times I actually considered walking out of the theater, given the fifty cents that I pay for tickets felt like more of a burden than a blessing. Given their history with some of the Marvel properties, I guess it was only a matter of time before hubris, incompetence, and just sheer greed made Sony start screwing up the Spiderman universe as well.

So Morbius stars Jared Leto as Dr. Michael Morbius who goes through the process that every Marvel character must endure; starting out as Marvel Man being a timid, shy, weak, muttering nerd who gets his ass whooped by bullies and eventually goes through a transformation and becomes really muscular and punches dudes and touches the boobs. We went over this with the review of Moon Knight, but it also applies to Spider-Man, Venom, Shang-Chi, Deadpool, Dr. Stranger, Captain America, Johnny Blaze, Tony Stark, Scott Lang, blah blah blah.

In this particular story Morbius is a scientist who grows up with a rare blood disorder that causes him to grow up in a hospital. Unfortunately for Michael Morbius it has the side effect of turning him into Jared Leto, and if being a vampire is a fate worse than death, this might be one step down. After saving his friend Milo (who later grows up to be Matt Smith), he learns that he has a real knack for science and goes to science school to learn science stuff like how to liquify bat organs to make vampire juice.

Through the power of god and anime, Morbius creates an experiment that will cure him of his blood disease, but it comes at a great price. Particularly it turns him into a vampire man. his job for the rest of the movie is to muse on this status as an anti-hero and then spend the other half considering killing himself and figuring out a way to do that. This is of course a Marvel movie, so the villain in the film is a Morbius style vampire, but one who is all bad instead of just half bad. Isn’t Marvel fantastic?

At some point when putting this monstrosity together, the folks at Sony forgot to make a film. It’s like director Daniel Espinosa wrote an incredibly long thesis paper only to realize after that he didn’t actually have a topic and the whole thing is just lorem ipsum copypasta. Even in the realm of comic book movies, this film is so utterly pointless that it really only serves the purpose of setting the stage for the next film in the universe. Nobody in this film really has a goal, the plot never feels like it’s leading up to anything, and I was shocked in my seat when the movie ended and the credits started rolling. Which I suppose is a good thing because at 104 minutes it feels surprisingly short.

The only characters I liked in this movie were the two FBI agents played by Al Madrigal and Tyrese Gibson. They are literally the only two characters in the movie who seem to know what their motivation is, are capable of putting together a plan, and comprehend the events that are taking place. Tyrese Gibson signed a three movie deal so we know he’s sticking around a while. Jared Harris plays Dr. Nicholas, and his job throughout the film is to show up and express his shock and amazement that the vampire people are the vampires.

Morbius is full of disconnected shots that add nothing to the film, and basically serve for Jared Leto and Matt Smith to show off their hot bods to the camera in slow motion. It’s a film that clearly never figured out what it wanted to do from the start to the end, and it’s another example of the studios throwing everything they’ve got at the wall to justify another side character’s origin story. Jared Leto apparently did his signature method acting when doing Morbius just like with the Joker, which is crazy because he’s method acted into yet another dullard bereft of a personality.

The fight scenes are terrible and in absolutely no way exciting as the vampires burst into fart clouds and show off that yes, Sony owns high framerate cameras. The ethical dilemma Morbius goes through barely surfaces or has any real hardship, and he basically defeats the villain without breaking much of a sweat. Even the post-credits scenes were especially bad. Sony hasn’t quite gotten the message that the failure of their previous attempts at creating extended universes should have imparted on them, and damnit they’re going to continue putting out this crap even if it finally kills their Sony Pictures department.

I award this film no points, and may God have mercy on its soul. We waited nearly two years of delays for this nonsense.

Rating: F