Morbius

I have to say that I quite liked this movie. A bit surprised since it is a new Marvel movie after all. It is even free of woke bull manure which made me even more surprised. The “scientific” part of Morbius changing his DNA, overnight no less, by means of some serum that he derived from vampire bats is of course utter nonsense but one cannot really complain too much about that since it is straight from the original comic book character. The story is really simple and not much to write home about but it works in its simplicity. After all, in this kind of movie we really do not need something fancy as long as it is not downright stupid. It only needs to be a vehicle for the action and special effects and for that purpose the story works fine. I like Morbius. He is intelligent and he doesn’t just sink down in some self pity or whining sessions when he finds out that things did not go exactly as planned. Sure, he is not happy about it but at least he does research into his condition and he actually takes the effort to learn what he can do with his new powers. I also do like the special effects and the action in general. The bad guy was rather predictable and not really very charismatic but he worked fairly okay. I think that most of the actors made a good enough job actually. If I should complain about anything it was that scene in the beginning where they claimed that vampire bats could “finish off” big animals in minutes or something. That not what vampire bats do or how they feed. It is of course utter ignorant bull manure by some idiot script writer and it was really totally unnecessary to soil the movie with such nonsense already in the first scenes. I had hoped that ignorant script writers like that died out together with the last flying rubber Piranha in the early 80’s. Anyway, I quite liked the movie. A lot of movies that I’ve watched lately have felt bloated and too long for the material. This one I actually felt was too short.

Not even that bad, to be honest. I had heard murmurs of <em>'Morbius'</em> being received poorly (as now I see via the average rating!) but didn't know to what degree, which is how I prefer it so I can form my own opinion - which is, I didn't dislike it. Admittedly I have nothing that I like either, but it's a forgettably fine film. In fact, I found it to be the quickest viewing experience of the year so far - the run time absolutely flew by for me. The cast are a bit up-and-down. Jared Leto has a few moments and overall I'm OK with him in the lead role, meanwhile Matt Smith is more miss than hit but again didn't annoy me or anything like that. Elsewhere, it was pleasant to see Jared Harris and Tyrese Gibson in smaller roles. The special effects, for the most part, are serviceable in my eyes. I think I also heard that people were questioning why the filmmakers didn't opt for prosthetics and went full blown CG for the faces - I found everything in that area to be fine, it would've been cooler if they mixed it up but if I hadn't heard anything about it I honestly would not have even noted it. There are some lame lines of dialogue, namely that hunger one, and the credit scenes don't leave any excitement or intrigue behind. Aside from that, I genuinely didn't dislike this. A quintessential 6/10 flick, for me. It is the weakest of the first three <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony%27s_Spider-Man_Universe#Films" rel="nofollow">SSU</a> films, granted.

I can't go lower than 3 stars because ever since "Alexander" (2004) I've had a tiny crush on Jared Leto, and some of the trails for this made him look swarthy and hot too. To be fair, also, he is not afraid of spending a great deal of time in the make up chair, as we saw in "House of Gucci" (2021) and frequently see here. Sadly, though, after my appreciation of Jared's eye candiness wore off, what I was left with was Luke Evans' "Dracula Untold" (2014) just without Charles Dance, and a hint of "Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (from 1931). The imagery is fine, the film looks super - but so what. Marvel/Columbia should be doing that anyway. It's the story. It's so thin. Matt Smith is lightweight at the best of times, and together with Adria Arjona's really unremarkable contribution as Leto's sidekick "Dr.Bancroft" and some sparing interventions from the other Jared in this film (Harris) this all just lollops along as if it were just the money-no-object pilot episode of a drama series that will struggle to get a commission. I love the genre, but the words barrel, bottom and scraped came to mind pretty early on. Sadly the handsome Mr. Leto reminds me of Eric Bana - very easy on the eye but not good enough to carry a film.