With Kraven the Hunter finally releasing later this week and Venom: The Last Dance still in theatres (just), now’s a good time to take a look at the other two sides of the deeply weird Sony Not-Quite-Spider-Man verse. Today, for Alasdair Stuart’s sins, he takes a deep dive into 2022’s Morbius.

Morbius

Written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless

Directed by Daniel Espinosa

Starring Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal and Tyrese Gibson

Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) is a genius who has dedicated his life to curing diseases of the blood, including the one constantly threatening to kill both himself and his best friend Milo (Matt Smith). Aided by Doctor Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona) and his mentor Doctor Emil Nicholas (Jared Harris), Morbius does the near impossible and finds a cure. A cure with a terrible cost, one that will put him at odds with Milo, isolated from humanity and in the cross hairs of FBI Agents Simon Stroud (Tyrese Gibson) and Al Rodriguez (Al Madrigal).

Morbius is indefensible. It’s just that simple. The only modern superhero movie I’ve seen which is less coherent or worth your time is the 1.5 act Josh Trank-directed Fantastic Four and there are major similarities. Both films have great casts, both films start strong and both films are destroyed by a third act full of committee mandated re-shoots and what looks to be hurried CGI.

Also like the Trank FF, there are moments where the movie they were trying to make breaks the surface. Leto is the least interesting leading man working in movies today but the really sad thing is that he’s actually not doing his usual mumbly alt Jesus schtick here. Much. The early scenes with him and Smith and Arjona and Harris are actually fun! He has more than one emotion! He’s convincingly intelligent and a little off! And then the CGI starts coming and, as Smashmouth would put, don’t stop coming. By the middle of the movie we’re back in full standard Leto and by the closing fight drowns everyone in a sea of muddy CGI. That CGI by the way has some really fun ideas at its core, using fluid and strands of light to show how vampires perceive time differently. It’s a great idea and not the only one here. But all of them end up looking the same; hurried, muddy, incoherent work which has been cut to appeal to everyone and appeals to no one.

That ruthless cutting renders the entire supporting cast basically meaningless despite their best efforts. Gibson is fun and actually engaged and he and Madrigal are a blast as a pair of Feds who may have been on the Venom case. You know this because Madrigal gets a single line which references it, and which is maybe 20% of his total screen time. Pay close attention and you’ll see Gibson’s character has a cybernetic arm. Don’t worry if you don’t notice it, his entire arc was cut so it, and he, and Madrigal, are window dressing. Honestly, everyone is. Except it’s an empty window. Leto is aggressively fine, Jared Harris is as effortlessly good and as completely untaxed as he so often is and Smith essays his dangerous cockney wideboy role from Last Night in Soho again just with half the screen time and a quarter of the depth of script. Arjona, so good in Hit Man with Glen Powell earlier this year, is given nothing to do but be a mildly feisty blood bag and poor Michael Keaton takes the title of Actor Worst Treated by The Multiverse Fad. Much like his Batman appearances in the heat death of the DCEU, his performance has been cut back to a meaningless cameo and a set up for a Sinister Six movie that’s still years out and still a coin toss as to whether it will happen at all.

There was a fun movie here, and I say that as someone who will cross the street to avoid Leto performances. Espinosa’s a good director, and if you’ve not seen the Ryan Reynolds/Denzel Washington-starring Safehouse or the Rebecca Ferguson/Jake Gyllenhal/Reynolds-fronted Life, treat yourself; they’re the biggest of fun. This isn’t.

Verdict: Perhaps the movie will be redeemed in some way should we ever see the Sinister Six assemble but right now this is an interesting idea ripped apart by corporate politics and moviemaking by committee. Everyone in the cast and crew has made better movies than Morbius. Watch literally any of those instead. If you must watch this, it’s on streaming on Channel 4 for the next few days in the UK and available to buy on disc and streaming in most places. 3/10

Alasdair Stuart