Kevin Smith is one of the great storytellers of this generation. I mean, he makes okay movies and his writing ushered in a new era of indie pseudo-real dialog for better or worse, but he is at his best just in front of a microphone telling a story. Not all Hollywood people need a podcast, but Kevin Smith does. Anyway, this skill was on display best at some convention when a fan asked him about his never released spec-script for Superman Lives. He tells the story behind signing on Tim Burton and Nic Cage, how he would fix Superman, and best of all his interactions with producer Jon Peters. Peters had several…interesting demands of a movie about Superman, not the least of which being he not wear the Superman suit and not fly, but the one that raised Kevin Smith’s eyebrows is that Superman would have to fight a giant spider in act three. You know what, just watch the video. It’s an artistically told story behind how bad movies get made. Sometimes rich guys with connections just want to see a giant spider.
Reader, there is a rich guy in Hollywood that really. REALLY. Wants to see the Sinister Six.
The Sinister One
Morbius is a bad movie. It has been in development hell for the entire life of the MCU. It was a twinkle in the eye of some producer since comic book movies were awful, and now gets to be living proof that they still can be. In the early 2000’s the Marvel name wasn’t synonymous with continuity and consistency. It was known for Blade and Daredevil. Not a good era for my favorite genre.
Enter The Living Vampire. Marvel has a ton of heroes that make sense, others that are creative, and still others that push the envelope, and Morbius is none of those. He’s just a vampire. That’s his thing. If you grew up on the Animated Series version, he sucked out plasma though his hands, but that was just an effort to get around the Fox censors. Can’t suck blood with teeth on that family channel.
So sometimes Spider-Man fights a vampire. That’s fine enough, except there were more references to the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler in the promo material and trailers than in the feature length film we got. Oh but at least the best live-action villain in the MCU was prominent in those trailers, maybe the Vampire will fight the Vulture. No to that too.
The Movie We Got
Morbius (2022) is a mediocre origin story that smacks of the era in which it was conceived. It isn’t the fun/bombastic-bad of Suicide Squad or Venom. Those movies have some people involved in the process that are obviously having fun. No, Morbius is a much more egregious boring-bad. This is a studio fabrication through and through. Sony is so desperate to enlarge their universe that they forgot to make a good movie. Again.
Morbius was born a smart crippled boy watching other terminally ill children filter through his hospital-home. Chernobyl and Mad Men star Jared Harris is one of the doctors that tends to young Morbius and his new friend Milo.
Then, I don’t know, 40 years pass because for those of you that didn’t know Jared Leto is 50-years-old, and Jared Harris still looks the same now caring for a very Matt Smith looking Milo.
Yes. But they shouldn’t for 2 more films over the next 10 years.
Super-Villain Sidebar
I don’t know a lot about Morbius from the comics, but Wikipedia taught me that this Milo guy was created for the movie. Of course Wikipedia also thinks that Leto and Smith’s performances received “some praise” from critics, so I don’t know if it can be trusted. It makes sense though, most comic characters fight some bizarro version of themselves at some point; think Reverse Flash, or Ant-Man’s Bumblebee, or Jeff Bridges in Iron Man 1, or oh yeah, Bizarro.
So Matt Smith also turns into a vampire, but he’s a baaaaaad vampire. Morbius is a good vampire. They fight a couple times. The movie ends. Then. Post-Credits.
Important to note before I get to the other production problems this movie had, but a dark gritty solo story about a vampire that happens to be in the universe of Spider-man would not inherently be bad. The lack of interconnection wasn’t the issue. The plot, pacing, dialog, motivations, acting, directing, tone, and MOVIE were the issues. You could read a hundred articles hyping up what this movie was supposed to be. And they could be a little bit true. But the final product was just a whole lot of bad.
The Movie After the Movie
All reports during production pointed to Michael Keaton being a huge part of Morbius. But the movie I just watched has absolutely no Vulture until two different post-credits scenes introducing him into this universe. The in-universe logic for HOW he gets to the universe is still fuzzy, but he’s in Sony’s world now.
That might be because of how COVID rocked the release calendar. Morbius was originally supposed to be released before Spider-Man: No Way Home. It was even slated before Venom 2 for that matter. And Marvel and Sony certainly have a history of squabbling over their most profitable hero. It’s no surprise that producers Feige and Pascal didn’t compare notes on who would be in which universe when. And as always it leaves the fans to pick up the pieces.
Tune in Next Week, in Sony’s Spectacular Spidey Saga
Morbius was never going to be a capital G good movie. But over-eager universe building and studio meddling certainly found a way to make it a worse one. Even an average Marvel movie gives you the satisfaction of knowing the next chapter in their story. Every TV show has a couple episodes you’d rather skip, but they are key to the season arc, so you can’t. Sony hasn’t built their spin-off yet, and their first couple tries at a pilot feel like they should be canceled mid-season.
Sony has known since Andrew Garfield walked down the Osborne Secret Shameless Sinister Six Corridor in Amazing Spider-Man 2 that they have a property that fans want. Fan demand for Venom has supported three movies with Venom in it at the box office that have ranged from bad to laughable in quality. They just saw the COVID box office blight end with a Spider-Team-up helmed by the Marvel/Disney team. Once again Sony is likely to learn the wrong lessons from all of this. The more villains they throw out and the more Spider-Man they advertise, the more money they can make. And that might be true for now. But I hope there is someone behind the scenes at Sony that is trying to make a good movie, and not just cram a giant spider wherever it fits.
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