WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Morbius, now playing in theaters.
Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) is introduced as a ridiculously great human being, with the film turning him increasingly monstrous. But while the film eventually uses this as an excuse to give him over-the-top superpowers, the beginning of the movie actually touched on the concept in an interesting way.
Morbius had the potential to be a genuinely engaging horror-tinted take on the superhero genre, with the first act setting up an interesting idea behind Morbius' transformation into a monster. But the film's eventual direction turns it into a disjointed finished product.
The first act of Morbius effectively sets up the perfect but tragic Michael Morbius -- a brilliant and empathetic doctor who's racing against time to discover a cure for the disease killing him, his best friend Milo (Matt Smith) and others around the world. This leads him to try an experimental serum that does save his life and even gives him amazing abilities, at the cost of transforming him into a monstrous vampiric form. The first time his powers activate, Morbius proceeds to slaughter eight people in a single rampage. The sequence is filmed akin to a horror film, with the eight men increasingly terrified as they get picked off. It's a brutal sequence and -- along with a moment when a mutated Milo hunts down a nurse -- hints at the kind of movie Morbius could have been.
There's something inherently scary about Morbius as a character. He's the ultimate example of science-wrought devastation, killing out of necessity. Morbius himself treats his newfound abilities like a curse a lot of the time, and openly notes his intentions to eventually destroy himself by administering a lethal cure to the serum. If the film had further explored the moral ambiguity of Morbius -- a good man becoming a monster -- it might have made for an interesting take on the superhero formula. Instead of becoming a hero, Morbius transforming into a regretful killer instead of an anti-hero or straight villain would have at least been interesting, and Daniel Espinosa's direction is most exciting in these moments -- somewhat grounded views of how horrifying someone like Morbius could be.
But the film's script proceeds to go all over the place, trying to wash away Morbius' crimes in the second act. The eight men he kills in his first rampage are dismissed as "mercenaries" who even the authorities don't care enough about to press charges against Morbius. It's a bizarre incongruity, especially as Morbius himself admits to his own guilt about the deaths while everyone else ignores them and instead focuses on a single "innocent" death seemingly at Morbius' hands. As Morbius goes on the run, the conflicted morality is replaced with glib jokes that felt more in line with a Spider-Man film, all building to a nigh-incomprehensible climax. In effect, the part of the film that was actually interesting disappears after the halfway mark.
Morbius had actual potential as a horror-tinted approach to the superhero genre. Superhero narratives are full of characters transformed by science, using their powers for good -- with Matt Smith's increasingly unhinged but emotionally invested Milo even potentially giving the film some extra depth as a subversion of characters who embrace their newfound powers. But focusing on someone who is quickly and genuinely losing control of those powers would have made for a uniquely tragic take on the tropes of the concept. Instead, Morbius painfully shifts gears into a far more standard and ultimately drab action film. It's a waste, because Morbius could have been something interesting if it had remained a dark exploration of morality and humanity.
Directed by Daniel Espinosa, Morbius is in theaters now.
Source: Trendz OH
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