Rating
Synopsis
A world famous scientist with a rare blood disorder decides to inject vampire bat saliva into his spinal cord. Like he actually thought that was a good idea! It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happens next – he turns into the hero that no one needs right now … or deserves. He is … Manbat, I mean Morbius.
MPAA Rating
Rated PG-13 for scary scenes and shouting and making Jared Leto temporarily ugly
Plot
Michael Morbius has it all – he’s famous, has the good looks of a (forever) young Jared Leto, the brains of an Olympic scientist (probably a thing) and a rare blood disorder. What? I didn’t say all of the things he had were good, I just said he had them. As a young man he makes a promise to his best friend of 5 minutes that he will find a cure for their disease and they will lead normal lives. Cut to 20 years later and he still hasn’t done it – like, the f**k was he doing all that time??
Well, I’ll tell you what he was doing – flirting with a lady doctor that’s what. He was also inventing a synthetic blood and winning the Nobel prize but mostly he was making sexy eyes at his associate Dr Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona). And who could blame him? or her? Those are two beautiful, sexy human doctors and if I was there… I feel like I’m getting off topic
Anyway, Morbius has a theory that vampire bat saliva can cure his blood condition if someone injected it into his spinal chord so, he does just that. And it works, kinda, with the small side effects of super human strength, speed and a rapacious thirst for human blood.
Will Morbius inject bat saliva into his childhood friend knowing the consequences? Will the image of Matt Smith dancing ever leave my brain? Will Jared Leto ever look his age again? He’s 51 god damn it!!
Pros
- The first 40 minutes or so are actually quite good
- A regular length super hero movie!
Cons
- The remaining hour is not
Verdict
This movie got roundly panned by critics and movie goers alike. So much so, ironic memes started to appear on the internet poking fun at this movie. Unfortunately Sony didn’t really get the joke and thought the renewed interest in the film warranted a rerelease in cinemas. So, it’s probably going to go down in history as one of the only films to flop twice. When watching the first half of the movie I couldn’t really understand the problem – it was no masterpiece but probably on a par with other Sony comic flicks like Venom, not quite at the level of the latest Spiderman movies. Then it all goes to shit. It seems to lose all direction, Matt Smith starts dancing, CGI takes over all movement and the plot becomes pretty non existent. This seems like an origin story for another movies that’s never going to be made – sure they tried to set up a cliffhanger ending for a sequel but at that point all interest was lost.
All the above really just masks the underlying problem however – vampires are dumb. Search your heart, you know it to be true. Maybe in 1990 there was some arguement for vampire movies having a place at the table but making a serious vampire movie these days is about a good idea as making a serious teletubby movie – sure you could have it that Po suspects Tinky Winky is responsible for multiple murders in Teletubbyland but she struggles to convince Laa Laa because her judgement is clouded because she’s been in love with Tinky Winky for years. As for Dipsy, well his trouble with addictions are well documented but if Po can convince him to go into rehab and get his head clear… I gotta go write this down
Anyway, where was I? Morbius… eh, not too good.