Thursday, March 31, 2022

Morbius - Another Anti-hero Story in the Spider-man Universe

When the tickets for this movie were already sold in advance since last weekend, my wife and I did not opt to buy them yet and wanted to see it during this weekend. However, yesterday we checked the available seats in the cinema near our home and to our surprise there were more vacant seats than occupied. So we decided to immediately go and buy the tickets for 5.30 PM right after I reached home from work. OK why don't I get to it now.

Brief Story Line

Michael Morbius (Jared Leto - Blade Runner 2049, House of Gucci etc) was a brilliant doctor who had been searching for cure to his rare blood disease with the help from Doctor Martine (Adria Arjona - 6 Underground, Sweet Girl etc) and the financial support from his childhood best friend Lucien aka Milo (Matt Smith - Official Secrets, The Crown TV series etc). Milo also suffered the same disease and had been taken care by Nicholas (Jared Harris - Allied, Carnival Row TV series etc).

After performing an illegal experiment on himself, it would appear that Morbius had been successful. Unfortunately though there was unexpected side effect. Meanwhile due to the incident during the experiment, FBI agents Rodriguez (Al Madrigal - The Way Back, Gary Unmarried TV series etc) and Stroud (Tyrese Gibson - The Christmas Chronicles Part 2, Fast and Furious movies etc) were investigating it.

So what would happen to Morbius? Find them all in this cool enough anti-hero movie from Marvel comics.

End of Brief Story Line

Some audience might not know that Morbius was one of the villain/enemy of Spider-man. As Sony pictures who owned the intellectual property of Spider-man and his enemies in Marvel comics, they already had plan to create Spider-verse (Spider-man universe) centered on the characters. We have seen the first one Venom sometime ago which was commercially successful, so it's no wonder they continued with another one, i.e. Morbius (and two more in the near future). My wife and I were probably part of the majority who are not familiar with his character, so we saw this one without any knowledge of him and just enjoy the movie as it flowed.

The character introduction was done in a standard manner but what I liked the most was when young Michael Morbius first met with his best friend Lucien as it made a convincingly close brotherly relationship till they grew up. The story telling was done in steady pace and not too complicated with predictable ending/twist. Our most favorite time in this movie was definitely when Morbius became this vampiric creature. The action was awesome and the special effects were pretty amazing for us and combined with good sound effects on the big screen, made this an enjoyable experience. Although few times during the action part I felt they were a bit too close up, but in general they were satisfying. 

The main character Morbius was played nicely by Jared Leto (who impressed my wife) while Matt Smith seemed really suitable as Milo. However personally to me, Doctor Martine here seemed to be overshadowed by the two male leads. The FBI agents presence were not really that impressive and seemed to be added just to give more color to the film, likely to avoid it being too dark and gloomy. Perhaps due to its strong dark feel, some audience who were accustomed to Marvel Studios superheroes might not be as receptive (compared to Venom which was comical and humorous, this one was far from it). Even the critics did not seem to enjoy this movie.

This film has a duration of 104 minutes which I thought was quite short for an origin story, but it seemed to sufficiently cover what the movie makers wanted to tell. It was directed by Daniel Espinosa whose prior works included Life, Safe House and few others. It has 2 mid end credit scenes but no post end credit scenes at all. Overall my wife and I were entertained by this movie as it had some cool action sequences and we thought Jared Leto kick-a$$ as Morbius, regardless of what critics said. The end also seemed to set up nicely for future continuation, especially related to Spider-verse. The one thing that I was fairly disappointed was the trailer revealed a bit too much information that probably better off kept hidden. So if you are highly anticipating the time when Spider-man going to face up with his enemies in future, this movie is definitely one you would not want to miss.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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