Morbius

The first signs of superhero-fatigue seem to be settling in amongst the wider public if the scathing feedback to Morbius is anything to go by. Audiences are, hopefully, starting to demand more and have their knowledge and commitment rewarded by comic book filmmakers.

There was always going to be a scapegoat at some point but, strangely enough, Morbius isn’t entirely deserving of that particular wooden spoon. However, being merely ‘watchable’ now is not nearly enough.

Watchable is exactly what Morbius is but that pretty much is an end of it. Sony’s MCU-adjacent Spider-verse is slowly building towards its inevitable ‘Avengers’ moment with the rumoured Sinister Six (and, maybe, a chance for Messrs Maguire or Garfield to put the webslingers back on) and this sits alongside the two Venom films in establishing the tone of this sister franchise.

That tone, as you’ll know from Tom Hardy’s films, is ‘made in the noughties.’ Seriously, I had to ponder whether I’d accidentally time travelled back to 2003 – the year that gave us Ben Affleck’s Daredevil and Underworld, two films with far more in common with this than anything from the MCU.

It’s dark, largely humourless and dated with a pretty damn solid first hour of backstory and character let down by a second half of messy CGI, indistinguishable battles, laughable plot decisions and an ending that literally feels like the film stock has run out and they couldn’t be bothered to fix it.

It’s a shame as there’s a few bits to like here. Jared Leto is eminently watchable and the idea of a vampire-adjacent character who wrestles with how not to kill humans is an interesting take. They drop in mentions of other vampire mythology and it largely ‘feels’ like it’s in the Spider-universe with nods to the Venom films and shots of the Daily Bugle (small details but more than the DCEU achieved in linking Suicide Squad and the hero films.) Matt Smith chews scenery as the villain, albeit with murky motivation, and the soundtrack is decent if not a little derivative of Batman Begins (it’s dangerously close to pure mimicry at points.)

It tows the line between being a vampire film, a villain film and a hero film fairly well; no 'item gathering' plot, pretty cool and 'logical' powers (in terms of what you would expect) and it largely obeys its own logic. It's one of those though that, writing the review a mere day later, large elements of the plot have been forgotten.

So, it's not the absolute horror show it’s been painted as critically (although, come to think of it, there is a distinct lack of actual ‘horror’ moments in this supposedly scary film) but another effort from Sony that isn’t fit to polish the MCU’s shoes. A Sinister Six film with this character, Hardy’s Venom and [SPOILER] Keaton’s Vulture, as revealed in the post-credits, would be very interesting especially if Garfield and/or Maguire were lured back into the web.

Better than Venom, worse than Underworld and a world first as I break my own rules to give this:

2.5 stars **"