It’s rare that six members of my social circle can stroll into a theatre, and all six walk out disliking a movie. But, that’s exactly what happened on Friday afternoon as we ventured outside under the cloudy skies and chilly winds of Eatontown, New Jersey. Some of us were bored. Some of us literally fell asleep in the theatre. But, all of us were ready to move on with our lives. Congratulations, Morbius – at least you’ve seemingly unified the moviegoing nation.
There’s a lot to unpack with Morbius, and Brandon and I took our best stab at doing so on the latest episode of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast (embedded below). In this piece, I’ll avoid any major spoilers, but if you’ve already seen the film and want to dive into a spoiler-filled discussion on it, check out the podcast. Let’s start with what worked – Jared Leto seems like the guy for the job. He’s creepy to begin with – I mean, hell…the guy looks like a vampire. And, he has the chops to pull off a character like Michael Morbius. You can see the vision behind the casting, and given the style of the film and how it was marketed, there’s an overall look to the property that just seems cool. There are horror elements in the movie that I found to be on-the-nose as well. But, it gave me Mortal Kombat vibes in the sense that the previews made the movie look a lot cooler than it would actually end up being.
A myriad of issues caused the story to fall completely flat. It was flimsy, shallow, and as our friend Sean Atkins of the Music City Film Critics Association put it, “goofy.” While I can appreciate Morbius getting right to the action, it would’ve benefitted from a little more time spent on character development. Instead, the plot is moved along hastily, and we’re given a random line here or there that is supposed to tell us when/how something has changed. We don’t get the deep sentiment between characters – we just establish that this one is good, this one is bad, and this one used to be good but now he/she is bad. That causes a severe disconnect. The movie’s villain is laughable, and Tyrese Gibson turns in a performance that made me feel like I was watching a re-run of a 1980s era syndicated crime drama. Some of the action scenes were so cloudy and jumbled up that I had a hard time making out what was going on. To say I was disappointed in the story would be an understatement. It all felt like the team behind Morbius just looked at common comic book movie tropes and started checking boxes.
Judging by the casting of Leto and the look of the marketing campaign leading up to the film, it’s easy to see the vision behind this character joining the Sony-verse. But, they could stand to dial it back and just focus on telling good stories, one at a time, before trying to create this expansive character universe to rival Marvel. Morbius flat out missed the mark miserably.
If you haven’t already, subscribe to The Vick’s Flicks Podcast on Apple Podcasts, follow us on Spotify, or wherever you take in your podcasts! Or, you can simply smash that play button on the embed below to hear me and our resident film critic, Brandon Vick, providing our thoughts on the disaster that was Morbius:
Listen to “Ep. 101: Morbius Review” on Spreaker.Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley
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