With a number of films exploring the multiverse, it comes to no surprise that there are new heroes, less traditional, coming to the forefront, including Marvel characters. One of these new characters is Morbius, the vampiric lead of the film with the same name, that came out in theatres on April 1st.
Morbius has been delayed by the pandemic which means that its release has been waited for quite some time now. The film is the latest addition to Sony’s Spider-verse which includes Venom and Madame Web. Morbius’ star is Jared Leto, acting as Dr. Michael Morbius, a scientist suffering from a rare blood disease. He seems to have found a cure; however, things go south from here. Morbius turns himself into a horrifying version of vampirism that plagues him and those he loves.
The film also stars Adria Arjona, Matt Smith, and Jared Harris. Michael Keaton also makes an appearance as Adrian Toomes, his character from the MCU film Spider-Man: Homecoming. Fans have spotted other hints of the multiverse in the trailers including elements of the Spider-verse.
However, if these two films are connected, their popularity is unmatched. Morbius was quickly received by a number of bad reviews, unlike the latest Spider Man film, Spider-Man: No Way Home. Spider Man’s popularity also goes above and beyond this latest film, having been successfully adapted in a number of industries, including popular video games like the 2018 Spider-Man and the Spider-Man 2 in 2004, and Marvel slot games like Spider-Man by software giant Playtech which distributes games at a number of the most popular new online casinos.
But what do critics and journalists think of Morbius? Leo Rydel criticised the film’s VFX by saying that ‘the CGI made me feel like I was watching Fantastic Four ’05‘.
Russ Milheim pulled out the main issue of Morbius from the very start saying that, ‘#Morbius is not good. None of the story sticks, and because of it, everything else falls apart. Questionable writing is rampant, and the third act is nonsense. Also, the two post-credits scenes are insulting. I’m convinced that the second was literally written by a six-year-old.’
William Bibbiani claims that ‘#Morbius is the worst Marvel superhero movie in a long, long time. Mostly inert, sometimes laughable. And the scene where someone tries to summon a cat by shaking their litter box, only to assume the cat is gone when that doesn’t work, is the weirdest thing I’ve seen in years.’
As a final comment, journalist Emma Kiely from the Collider claims that ‘The central problem of Morbius is a lazy and uninspiring script. No weight or depth is given to any character. There’s little humor and when it tries to make a tongue-in-cheek joke, it fails miserably. Being a villain origin story of sorts, it’s fair to draw similarities with Venom. However, Morbius lacks all charm and devotion to its main character, hoping that lengthy action sequences and jarring images of Leto and Smith’s animated faces will make us forget about how poor the script is.’