A new Marvel movie, Morbius, has been released and it has gotten terrible reviews, and it is deservedly so. It was not a good movie, and it does not seem like it has any real ramifications to the MCU, so between this and Venom, the Spiderverse has been weakening Marvel's good name. In the MCU, Thor Dark World has the worst reputation of the films, and although I have not watched that movie since it came out, it has to have been better than these movies. Marvel does get people to go to the movies though, so that is always a good thing, and amazingly it is leading the box office for the weekend.
Morbius is about a genius doctor with a disability, that has spent his whole life searching for a cure for his physical deterioration, and what better animal to choose to study than a bat that feeds off blood. Morbius has developed an artificial blood that has saved many lives, but now he is developing a new infusion that will help to restore his and hopefully others muscular abilities. He uses DNA from a bat and the trial works well on a rat, so he decides to put it into his own body, thus turning him into a man with vampire like tendencies, like a craving for blood, and the blood is what gives him his strength/power, and the synthetic blood is not quenching his thirst. Before he can sort out this problem, his former best friend, who has a similar condition, Milo, injects himself with the cure, and Milo has no problem with feeding off others. So Morbius must team up with his lab assistant to find a better substitute, but he also must try and stop Milo, all while going through blood withdrawals.
If there is any symbolic aspect of this movie, it has to do with battling with addiction. Morbius and Milo both develop an addiction and taste for blood. This means that when they do not have it, they start to break down mentally and physically. They would do anything to get their fix, and for Milo this means he will literally murder multiple innocent people just so he can get his fix. Also like addicts, the more they have of the blood, the more they need to scratch their itch. Milo is like the bad friend that keeps trying to get you to come back and sink further into the problem, whereas Morbius is trying to move on with his life and become better.
In a way, it could also be argued that Marvel movies and tv shows are an addiction as well. So at some point, the movies are not going to be good enough, and the tv shows are not going to be good enough, we as the viewers are going to become oversaturated with all the content, and Marvel is no longer going to be able to fill our addiction, and maybe that is starting to happen now with Morbius, and Eternals was also really bad. At some point the addiction will die out, and a new supplier will have to step in to take over. Watching this movie probably simulates what bad withdrawal symptoms would be like.
The fight scenes in Morbius were convoluted and incoherent at times. The only thing to compare them to is the Death Eaters from Harry Potter. After a person teamed up with Voldemort, they got his awful ability to fly/teleport in a ghostlike black wisp through the sky, and it was almost the same kind of wisp in which Morbius and Milo would fly. While this was happening, nothing could really be seen or taken from it, it was just a flurry of movement with no consequential visuals. Then they would slow it all the way down, and they would show a brief visual of them landing a blow before it would go back to hyper speed. The music at parts is also very reminiscent of The Dark Knight trilogy, and this is made worse by the fact that this movie is also centered around bats. So it feels very stolen.
The best part of this movie was seeing the trailer for Spiderman Across the Spiderverse Part I. The one cool thing from the actual movie was how their pupils would distort themselves. Everything else from the actual movie just felt like a swing and a miss. Jared Leto was not good, and neither was Matt Smith as Milo. They tried to make some moments comedically funny, and they ended up just completely missing. Also they had a crippled kid get beat up and made fun of in the street. I know there are some crappy people in the world, but it is hard to believe that someone would beat up a kid in crutches and not give him a piece of paper back.
Moon Knight also started this week on Disney+ with the first episode being released. It is above average for violence in the MCU, and it does try to work in some horror elements as well. The problem with the horror elements is that it feels very much like a Disney scary movie, they do not fully commit to it, and it just creates a minimal unsettling feeling at best. The scenes when Oscar Isaac is going back and forth between Steven and Marc are cool, and they do impart a good sense of horror in not being able to control one’s actions and seeing the bloody scene one has created due to the lack of control. When Steven is in trouble, his mind switches over to his alternate persona Marc, and he is able to commit some real damage, and when Steven flips back over he is always mortified at the result of the action Marc took. Also Marvel did the thing again where they said, if this person would have been around, then Hitler could have been prevented. They did this in Eternals as well, and it still seems like something that is very distasteful. There was some backlash after Eternals when they said this, so I was surprised to see that they did it again. Through one episode, Moon Knight has been okay, I have high hopes that it will get better as it goes, and hopefully it can more effectively implement some horror elements into the story.
Overall Morbius was very bad, if you are a fan of Marvel, you may feel obligated to see it, because at some point it will interweave itself into the wider fabric of the MCU, but I feel like it will be very minimal. The good news is that it is less than two hours, and you do not have to sit through all of the credits to see both of the end credit scenes. I cannot say that I recommend going to see this movie. I can recommend watching the first episode of Moon Knight as it hopefully switches up the superhero genre a little bit more. Also Oscar Isaac is the best, and he is the star of Moon Knight, so that helps make it more worth it as well. I give Morbius 2 Stars, and that may be a little generous.
Other Movies This Week:
Moonshot: A predictable rom-com about two people in relationships that are not what they seem, and they end up finding each other on space flight from Earth to Mars. It does have an incredible color pallet though.
The Bubble: A bad movie about making a bad movie. Some comedic moments, but largely underwhelming.
Nightmare on Elm Street 1-3: This is my first time digging into this classic horror franchise. I have watched the new reboot, but I had not watched the originals, and 1 and 3 are quite good!
New Rankings: Morbius: 2 Stars
Moonshot: 2.5 Stars
The Bubble: 1.5 Stars
A Nightmare on Elm Street: 4 Stars
Nightmare on Elm Street 2: 3 Stars
Nightmare on Elm Street 3: 3 Stars
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