When thinking of Marvel, fans expect a movie that has many loglines leading to what will be seen in the upcoming scenes, lots of action, and within that, beautiful color display with the costumes and visual effects. Also thinking of how this movie will lead to the next tier of the multiverse. Sadly, this movie did not fulfill the expectations that Marvel normally meets.
When Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) becomes over-obsessed with trying to find a cure for himself and his best friend Milo’s (Matt Smith) blood illness, he takes some dramatic risks. On a vessel in the middle of the ocean, Michael works alongside his co-worker Martine (Andria Arjona), to try and figure out the correct data for the cure to inject into Michael. The injection dramatically changes him into a vampire, causing him to drain the blood of the crew that was on the vessel with him and Martine, along with Michael injuring Martine, putting her in the hospital. He experiences physical and mental effects causing him to change dramatically, gaining powers like speed, strength, bloodlust and putting a temporary stop to his illness.
One successful aspect of the movie is what the visual effects look like when Michael transforms into his vampire side. Whether it is him fighting someone or just listening to the sounds around him, the visuals look a bit different compared to other heroes, like Spiderman with his “spidey sense.” This is because a viewer usually can’t really see the visual aspect of sound waves that look like radio waves, but in “Morbius” it is very exaggerated and noticeable with its color and texture.
Now going into the sections of the movie that were uneasy, where to start? In movies with much action, viewers also expect a good storyline of how the characters got to where they are. But this movie did not meet those expectations. In this case, there were small chunks of the backstory on Michael, but they were too short to fully understand what was to happen in the upcoming scenes. There were some sad and heartfelt moments in this film where a viewer doesn’t really feel the emotional connection because the way that the scenes were distributed didn’t have that effect.
The color template of the film seems to have been very dull. There were scenes where there could have been more touches of color to make the visual look more interesting instead of just using one color filter like a light blue filter or dark gray.
Finally, the music score and the songs created sounded fine, but it was too reminiscent of “The Batman” that recently came out. For example, there is a suspenseful scene in “Morbius” where there was much tension between two characters, and that tone was too similar to another scene from “The Batman” that was also tense in the action sense. “Morbius” is about bats, but with the music in the background, it didn’t seem like an original score, more like a copycat of “The Batman.”
Even though this was a movie associated with Marvel, it just doesn’t hold the reputation and expectation that Marvel has with its previous features. Viewers more than likely won’t see it again because it did not live up to my expectations from what was pitched in the trailers and post release interviews. The only thing worth seeing through this entire movie was the after-credit scene.
