Morbius

Sony's own universe based on famous characters from Spider-Man hasn't started off very well. Both Venom films have received heavy criticism from critics, but perhaps Morbius is just what the universe needs? Morbius is about Michael Morbius who was born with a rare blood disorder for which there is no treatment. However, Michael is an incredibly talented man and a successful scientist, who has even won a Nobel Prize for his work. He has dedicated his entire life to medical research and he will not give up hope of curing himself and everyone else living with this blood disorder. Having, he believes, succeeded in finding a cure, he injects himself and becomes stronger than expected. However, with the exception that he has now built up a thirst for blood, and become a vampire.

The film wastes no time in jumping straight to Michael's transformation into a vampire and it turns out not to be a stroke of genius. At the beginning of the film, we are introduced to the boy Milo (Matt Smith), who is also afflicted with the same disease, with whom he quickly befriends, and the doctor Emil Nikols (Jared Harris), who also wants to try to find a cure. However, the relationship with both Milo and Nikols lacks an emotional basis and all the characters in the film can be described as hollow. At no point is it possible to feel anything for the characters at all, and it's not uncommon for the viewer to frown at their, to say the least, strange motives. Milo becomes, for some incomprehensible reason, evil and he wants to kill Michael at any cost.

Morbius feels extremely rushed and never builds up any emotional weight for any of the characters, and there is quite little substance to rest of the story. This is a huge shame as it is so obvious that Jared Leto, Matt Smith and Jared Harris are struggling to do what they can with this silly script. The film only delivers during the times that director Daniel Espinosa experiments with the horror elements that create an eerie feeling, but these elements are, however, very sparse. Even the characters aren't well written, but fortunately, Morbius isn't a complete character assassination like Venom. Although the script is poorly written, it at least, feels like the screenwriters tried to manage the character with care and make him true to the comics.

The film's special effects also leave a lot to be desired. As Morbius moves faster than the eye, Espinosa uses slow-motion effects a bit too much when the Doctor is no longer in human form. All the action sequences contain these effects and it gets ridiculous the second time around. It's not helped by the fact that the CGI is so terribly ugly that you'd rather not see the slow motion at all. Every time Michael gets angry, we viewers are also forced to watch his hideous, computer-animated vampire face, which quickly becomes tiresome as it happens about every five minutes. Unfortunately, he doesn't look scary either and it would have been great if the filmmakers had the guts to let us wait for a while and not let us see the monster right away. Kind of like the beginning of The Incredible Hulk where we don't get to fully see the green monster, a choice that lets us build up a bit of a fear of him.

Unfortunately, Morbius is not what the newly created universe needs. It's slightly better than the first Venom and considerably better than its sequel, but Sony has a long way to go if they're going to convince moviegoers to want to invest their time in this universe. Without saying too much, the two scenes that follow the credits show that Sony has big plans for its villains but whether they'll manage to stick the landing, I'm very sceptical.