Seat B9, my sister in B10. We can barely contain our excitement as we eat the surprisingly delectable AMC food and curl our toes with pure anticipation to see the infallible actor, Jared Leto, take the screen by storm.
Nicole Kidman is about to tell us how amazing AMC is, so I’ll report back after the movie ends. All I know about this movie is what can be gleaned from the trailers and the literally endless amount of TikToks begging me to not waste my time watching it and telling me how absolutely God awful this is, but I’ve seen almost every Marvel movie in theaters so I thought I could just hate watch it for kicks.
Jared Leto is a sicko, so I’ll keep an eye out for moments when I don’t think he’s acting. I’ll let my sister take the mic:
Charlotte’s POV:
I’ve got a goblet of nectar (red icee) in one hand and a hot dog in my other, so there’s little that could make me unhappy at this moment. I know I’m going to see Nicole Kidman in her best role ever, the AMC ad, so I’m pretty pumped about that. Jared Leto scared the bejeebies out of me, and I’m worried I’m only going to be able to think about the cult he runs while I watch Morbius; even so, I’m looking forward to making my own evaluation of this Twilight fanfic.
POST-MORBIUS
I have so many words to say about this movie that I need to create a second language with twice as many words that can cover what is going through my brain after being subject to those heinous hours of my life in which I watched an endless string of scenes where Jared Leto wore the exact hair-dos that I wear to school every single day.
The entire movie felt like a multi-hour trailer. I kept waiting for characters to make deep connections, to grow, to be dynamic. I was sorely mistaken, because this isn’t that type of movie. Every single scene felt like it was written by a different person. In one scene, Jared Leto would be nice and funny. In another scene, he would be stark and egotistical. Maybe that was just Jared Leto not knowing the camera was rolling, but I’ll blame it on the writers.
Most of all, nothing made sense. You don’t go to a Marvel movie for it to make sense, but this truly could have been a work of surrealism at Sundance. If it had been marketed as surrealism, I think it would have been inserted into the Oscars and would have stolen the award from an actually good movie because it was completely incomprehensible. He has this unnamed disease and he wants a cure and apparently it’s really hard and experimental to find, but then he goes to a cave and gets a bunch of bats and then dissects one and then tosses the liver in some saline and then injects that solution directly into a mouse and then the mouse dies and then it comes back to life. Like what the heck?
How did it take him multiple years of experimenting if all he had to do was put a long-dead, shriveled-up bat liver into salty water and stick it in a mouse? And why didn’t the mouse get powers?
How does he have the ability to echolocate when none of our organs can do that? Do bats have more facial muscles and that’s how he looks like the Sam Raimi Green Goblin? Why did they just toss in Michael Keaton at the end?
The comedic relief was God awful. That could’ve been the one redeeming thing about this movie, but no. I actually did laugh a lot, to the point where my sister hit me in the arm and told me to shut up or forever hold my peace, but it wasn’t at the jokes. From the moment a bunch of bats flew out of a cave and around Morbius, I giggled. Then, when he injected himself with the serum and had abs, I giggled. When he drank artificial blood for the first time, I snorted. When he drank the woman he’s supposed to be in love with’s blood right after she died in his arms, I almost cried. That actually sent me over the edge.
Let’s actually switch to his powers. I know I mentioned echolocation, but I want to dissect the best part about this movie, which is the way they depict his enhanced strength. It looks like he’s becoming a little baggie of Crystal Light, and while that looks cool, how on earth are the Marvel people going to justify that? What about bats makes them dissipate into Crystal Light?
How can he hear very specific conversations from miles away? How can he fly with no propulsion when bats have wings and he doesn’t? Does he turn hollow? Are his bones now hollow? What happened to his blood? Does he have bone marrow?
Does he have telekinesis? Why couldn’t Doctor Who also communicate with or control the bats? Do bats have super-strength? How did both of them get super-strength? Why isn’t Morbius rich if he created fake blood? How would injecting DNA into a middle-aged man make his entire body change?
I’m sorry I’m asking you questions. Neither of us know the answers, so it’s pointless. I’ll let you go, but only if you promise me to never see this movie. Ever. Please don’t. I know we just met, but I think I owe it to you. Don’t see this movie.
If you think this review is scattered and disorganized, you should (but seriously don’t) watch Morbius. This’ll look like the Bible after that.
CHARLOTTE’S POST-MORBIUS POV:
I tried SO HARD to stay onboard with this movie, and to be honest, I didn’t mind the movie’s quirks for a good while. The frequent and random slo-mo shots of vamp-Morbius and confusing plot developments just made me view the movie as a potential comfort film that was probably over-bullied online.
However, and that is a vicious however, an unthinkable plot development in the movie’s final act made me sit with my mouth agape for five minutes. I can only describe my emotions during the last ten minutes as “agog.” I was bewildered at how they chose to initiate and resolve the boss battle, switching the villain from sadistic and insane to misguided and sentimental in about .25 seconds. The post-credit scenes made me laugh out loud because I couldn’t believe the dumpster-fire I was seeing.
I stayed up for a little while last night, just trying to process what I had just witnessed/the trauma this movie departed on me. I rarely view a movie as “bad” (I am a huge proponent of guilty pleasures and accepting a movie’s campiness) but once they made that final-act decision, I was gone. Jared Leto, you sicko, of course you signed up for this movie, it’s just as big of a let-down as you, you weirdo. The one concession I can give is that the love interest is hot, though a bad actress. No more questions, please, I want to wipe this experience from my brain forever.
****
I rarely ever write about things that I don’t like on this blog. I have more fun writing about things I enjoy than listing all the reasons I hate something. But this experience called for a civil service to spread one important message: Don’t see Morbius. Don’t do it. We were fools for thinking the world might be wrong. Don’t see it. See The Lost City. See CODA. See The Batman. See Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Don’t see Morbius.