PREMISE
Biochemist Michael Morbius tries to cure himself of a rare blood disease, but he inadvertently infects himself with a form of vampirism instead.
THE GOOD STUFF
JARED LETO – I have found myself a staunch Jared Leto supporter over the years. This has been unconsciously done, and it’s now starting to be pointed out by friends of mine. I’m practically the man’s f****** lawyer at this point. You know what? That’s fine by me. You know why? BECAUSE OF MOVIES LIKE THIS. I’ve seen people like Ford, Portman, Pacino, Willis, Berry, and Cage get involved with projects in which they are CLEARLY PHONING IT IN. And the one thing I can say about Jared Leto is… That is never the case.
No matter how bad the film is, this man cares too much. He sent sex toys and dead rats to THE SUICIDE SQUAD’s cast, he learned that ridiculous accent for HOUSE OF GUCCI, he grew cornrows for PANIC ROOM, he shaved all his body hair for DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, he gained so much weight for CHAPTER 27 that he gave himself gout for the love of all that is holy. And for this film, THIS lousy film, he put on all that muscle when he didn’t have to, and it only serves him for ONE F****** SCENE IN THE MOVIE.
To this film’s detriment, he can’t take things tongue in cheek like, let’s say, Tom Hardy does in the VENOM movies. It would have been a much better film had he done that. But he can’t because he gives a f*** WAY TOO MUCH. And I greatly respect him for that. Fight me.
MATT SMITH – He is a very serious actor. He’s on a very serious show on Netflix about the very serious royal family. I’ve seen one season of that show. This man deserved his Emmy nomination for sure. But in watching that one season on the television, it became utterly incomprehensible to me that this man was capable of making me laugh at any time for however long his career tends to last from this point.
But here we are, in THIS film of all things, where he seems to be having the time of his life. This performance hearkens me back to the late ’90s early 2000 versions of these superhero movies where they were having fun, and you can see it. There is a scene in which Smith is getting dressed in a mirror, dancing his heart out to a song, and combing his hair, and I couldn’t help but think… good for him. All of that heavy-ass Shakespearean-level drama that that man has had to consume for that Netflix show does not matter here.
I’m sure we’ll be seeing more Matt Smith in the future regarding films. THE CROWN made him have my curiosity. But now he has my attention. Not going to lie.
THE BAD STUFF
TYRESE- Everything that makes movies like this bad is embodied in the detective whose name I can’t remember. Tyrese’s third billed in this movie, and he might have ten total minutes of screen time. Yet, there are scenes in the trailer of him that flat out do not exist in this film, and I only know that because (and this is not a spoiler alert) he never changes clothes. Not once. This film spans several weeks, if not months, and not until the film’s very last scene does Tyrese have a different outfit.
His entire character is based on asking Morbius questions that don’t have answers. He has one facial expression and doesn’t have a back story whatsoever. He is not moved whatsoever by the discovery of genetically mutated vampires in the city of New York. Of course, he’s not. Why? Because he has….you guessed it…. a mysterious past. There are many little but very noticeable mistakes that films like this tend to make. And it’s all kind of accumulated between this Tyrese character, and…..
MARTINE BANCROFT – That is the name of the love interest in this movie. I actually had to go to Wikipedia to look up the character’s actual name because they say it maybe once or twice in total. Not that they would need to say it all that much, since she doesn’t have anything to do but to be in peril throughout this film somehow.
We are supposed to believe that she assists Morbius in all of his deeds. We are supposed to believe that she helps Morbius along his journey as this story progresses. We are also supposed to believe that she exists to do anything more than look hot and be saved. But that is not the case. You could have cut this character entirely from the film, and nothing would change.
CGI – It’s not that the special effects are bad they’re just excessive. I have no doubt that serious money made this look as good as possible, and I can see why they thought it was marketable based on the special effects they invested in. However, when your film takes place in the dark 90% of the time, your special effects get lost in all of the.. stuff. The facial transformation effects that they use are… Affective. I can’t necessarily call them bad. But the action really suffers from the lack of lighting mixed with all of their CGI.
THE UGLY STUFF
THIS F****** THIRD ACT- This movie is 1 hour and 42 minutes. And the third act of this movie might be about fifteen minutes of the running time. So much important plot stuff happens, and it is all poorly edited, to say the very least. It is an absolute train wreck that doesn’t tie the story well together in the climactic fight again.
THESE F******POST-CREDIT SCENES- It says a lot about how horrible these post-credit sequences are when they find a way to get discussed and insulted in every other review that you may see of this movie. Believe the hype. These two post-credit sequences are just as confounding as advertised. They both run about three total minutes of running time, yet you can spend 20 minutes breaking down the sheer foolishness of both of these scenes. It’s actually amazingly bad.
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I don’t want to say that this movie had all this potential because it didn’t. We all knew from the trailer that this was going to be bad. The question was, how bad? And contrary to popular opinion, this is not the worst movie of 2022 so far. And this is not the worst movie of Marvel or DC (But pretty close).
Some things could have worked. But they just didn’t. They continuously didn’t. And they didn’t work in a very loud way.
MORBIUS is playing in theaters now
