Morbius (2022)
April 2, 2022 10:54 PM - Subscribe
Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder, and determined to save others suffering his same fate, Dr. Michael Morbius attempts a desperate gamble. What at first appears to be a radical success soon reveals itself to be a remedy potentially worse than the disease.
Not the trainwreck it's reputed to be; just a little very mild (legit PG-13) horror. Probably going to be a stirring experience for a certain population of 14-to-16-year-olds (if you know, you know). I didn't want to smack Jared Leto at any point, so that's a big improvement over his other recent films.
Not the trainwreck it's reputed to be; just a little very mild (legit PG-13) horror. Probably going to be a stirring experience for a certain population of 14-to-16-year-olds (if you know, you know). I didn't want to smack Jared Leto at any point, so that's a big improvement over his other recent films.
Either you were once a 14-year-old girl (or sometimes boy) into vampires, or you weren't and that world is impenetrably sealed to you.
posted by praemunire at 5:54 PM on April 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 5:54 PM on April 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
Ha, ha! Yeah, okay.
I would totally go see a film adaptation of Vampire: The Masquerade, though.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 6:24 PM on April 3, 2022 [8 favorites]
I would totally go see a film adaptation of Vampire: The Masquerade, though.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 6:24 PM on April 3, 2022 [8 favorites]
Seen on Twitter: Y'all be careful out there. I had two tickets to Morbius in my car and someone broke in and left four more.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:05 AM on April 4, 2022 [15 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:05 AM on April 4, 2022 [15 favorites]
Seriously, it's not like I'd tell someone who doesn't like this kind of movie/genre to go see it, but I was genuinely ready to walk out if it got intolerable, and I've seen many a worse action film.
posted by praemunire at 9:14 AM on April 4, 2022
posted by praemunire at 9:14 AM on April 4, 2022
I would totally go see a film adaptation of Vampire: The Masquerade, though.
One finger of the monkey’s paw curls horribly closed.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 2:42 PM on April 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
One finger of the monkey’s paw curls horribly closed.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 2:42 PM on April 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
As someone who had the second edition core book for Masquerade and also very much enjoyed Blade, how much Blade does this have in it, on a scale of "Not-Blade" to "Hella-Blade"?
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:27 PM on April 5, 2022
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:27 PM on April 5, 2022
This movie's ancestor is Darkman, not Blade (or Underworld, for that matter). (That's actually giving it a little too much credit, but that's the vibe: set in a city, but not meaningfully urban.)
posted by praemunire at 10:00 PM on April 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 10:00 PM on April 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
> I would totally go see a film adaptation of Vampire: The Masquerade, though.
One finger of the monkey’s paw curls horribly closed.
This is the best chance I've had to tell this story: when the Vampire: The Masquerade TV series was first on, I was roommates with a guy who was heavily into LARPING that particular game. He and another of his LARP friends were hanging out in our place one night watching TV, and an ad for the show came on; some kind of quick-cut thing with unexplained funky visuals from various episodes. One of the visuals they had was a shot with a cluster of about eight guys standing in the middle of the room and chatting amongst themselves - and then after a couple seconds, they all suddenly and simultaneously draw guns and point them all in the same direction.
My roommate and his friend saw that and instantly said "I've done that in a game...."
....I've been hearing that the real appeal of this film is seeing Matt Smith revel in full on glorious scene-chewing villain mode.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:21 AM on April 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
One finger of the monkey’s paw curls horribly closed.
This is the best chance I've had to tell this story: when the Vampire: The Masquerade TV series was first on, I was roommates with a guy who was heavily into LARPING that particular game. He and another of his LARP friends were hanging out in our place one night watching TV, and an ad for the show came on; some kind of quick-cut thing with unexplained funky visuals from various episodes. One of the visuals they had was a shot with a cluster of about eight guys standing in the middle of the room and chatting amongst themselves - and then after a couple seconds, they all suddenly and simultaneously draw guns and point them all in the same direction.
My roommate and his friend saw that and instantly said "I've done that in a game...."
....I've been hearing that the real appeal of this film is seeing Matt Smith revel in full on glorious scene-chewing villain mode.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:21 AM on April 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
"to bats... it's lethal. To humans, it's deadly." (reddit)
posted by Horkus at 12:17 PM on April 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Horkus at 12:17 PM on April 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
We just watched this, and Kitteh and I agree that the world could have done with a little Lessbius of this... thing. It apparently landed better with other people in the thread, but it felt weirdly inert to me -- the full plot laid itself bare in the first five minutes.
For some reason the first "kids in the hospital scene" hit me like the "Origin of Hector Boyardee" commercial and I spent a lot of the movie thinking of how much more fun it would be if Jared Leto's forbidden science was mainly figuring out how to cure blood disease through the unspeakable horror that is lasagna in a can.
Of all the weird inconsistencies and wild tonal shifts and things that just don't make sense -- including a succession of random people who just seem to wander into the "secure lab" -- he somehow punches his enemy with bats at the end, as far as I can tell? -- for some reason the post-post-credits scene bugged me the most, because there's just no logical sense to Adrian Toomes appearing in a new universe, re-creating a supersuit built using alien technology that never existed in this universe, tracking down some rando monster he reads about in a newspaper (I guess?), and then dropping the name Spider-Man like it means something. What in the world is that about?
posted by Shepherd at 5:41 PM on May 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
For some reason the first "kids in the hospital scene" hit me like the "Origin of Hector Boyardee" commercial and I spent a lot of the movie thinking of how much more fun it would be if Jared Leto's forbidden science was mainly figuring out how to cure blood disease through the unspeakable horror that is lasagna in a can.
Of all the weird inconsistencies and wild tonal shifts and things that just don't make sense -- including a succession of random people who just seem to wander into the "secure lab" -- he somehow punches his enemy with bats at the end, as far as I can tell? -- for some reason the post-post-credits scene bugged me the most, because there's just no logical sense to Adrian Toomes appearing in a new universe, re-creating a supersuit built using alien technology that never existed in this universe, tracking down some rando monster he reads about in a newspaper (I guess?), and then dropping the name Spider-Man like it means something. What in the world is that about?
posted by Shepherd at 5:41 PM on May 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
We just watched it because memes (it's morbin' time), intending to just laugh at it, but actually liked it. I think everything works except for the final scene, which is too short and just fell flat.
My son says he liked it better than The Batman and Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. He's wrong, but still.
posted by signal at 7:52 PM on May 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
My son says he liked it better than The Batman and Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. He's wrong, but still.
posted by signal at 7:52 PM on May 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
It apparently landed better with other people in the thread
To avoid any doubt, I am not saying it was good. I am just saying that in the context of the many, many crappy action-horror movies out there, and the many movies in which Jared Leto is annoying as hell, it was relatively harmless. If I was visiting people and they happened to be watching it, I wouldn't ask them to change the channel.
posted by praemunire at 7:15 AM on May 25, 2022
To avoid any doubt, I am not saying it was good. I am just saying that in the context of the many, many crappy action-horror movies out there, and the many movies in which Jared Leto is annoying as hell, it was relatively harmless. If I was visiting people and they happened to be watching it, I wouldn't ask them to change the channel.
posted by praemunire at 7:15 AM on May 25, 2022
A.V. Club: It Morbin' Time again, apparently, as Sony returns Morbius to theaters this weekend
I am tempted to catch it at a matinee just to juice the numbers and see if Sony will really green light a campy sequel
posted by Apocryphon at 12:25 AM on June 3, 2022
I am tempted to catch it at a matinee just to juice the numbers and see if Sony will really green light a campy sequel
posted by Apocryphon at 12:25 AM on June 3, 2022
i mean
this was awful
awful awful
AWWWW FUL
even the trailer lied! no "what's up doc" with michael keaton.
no "the cure is worse than the disease" with jared harris
the best thing about this was I got to read about the internet memes
the second best is i now have a new ultra-low calibration for bad tv only slightly above "flesh gordon and the cosmic cheerleaders" or "highlights of CPAC 2010-2022, free rabies edition"
posted by lalochezia at 8:33 PM on June 3, 2022
this was awful
awful awful
AWWWW FUL
even the trailer lied! no "what's up doc" with michael keaton.
no "the cure is worse than the disease" with jared harris
the best thing about this was I got to read about the internet memes
the second best is i now have a new ultra-low calibration for bad tv only slightly above "flesh gordon and the cosmic cheerleaders" or "highlights of CPAC 2010-2022, free rabies edition"
posted by lalochezia at 8:33 PM on June 3, 2022
It was, to be clear, super dumb. I found some things to laugh about.
I liked how network news would cover trivia:
* "new bodies found outside a bar popular with Wall Street traders" - so, like, vampires vs vampires, amirite?
* a rando turned up in prison!
I wondered if Morbius was bleeding into the water supply, spawning vampire... turtles, maybe?
I thought he might be driving to Las Vegas. You know. Bat Country.
posted by Pronoiac at 10:38 PM on July 14, 2022
I liked how network news would cover trivia:
* "new bodies found outside a bar popular with Wall Street traders" - so, like, vampires vs vampires, amirite?
* a rando turned up in prison!
I wondered if Morbius was bleeding into the water supply, spawning vampire... turtles, maybe?
I thought he might be driving to Las Vegas. You know. Bat Country.
posted by Pronoiac at 10:38 PM on July 14, 2022
It's not the kind of bad that might cause Dan Olson to do an extensive YouTube postmortem, dispassionately dissecting all the bad decisions made by the filmmakers, but it does have a sort of aggressive mediocrity to it. This would be the movie that you'd expect Jared Leto to indulge in the sort of runaway Method-on-meth frenzy that he did for Suicide Squad (which Olson did dissect mercilessly on YouTube, and beautifully so), but instead affects a painful sincerity in not wanting to cut loose a little, even after a literal lifetime of being on the verge of death; of course, that means more scenery chewing for Matt Smith, who digs in with a palpable gusto. Adria Arjona (Good Omens, Andor) gets little to do except various modulations of concern and fear, until the very end; I wouldn't terribly mind a sequel just to see what she might do in that. Morby's powers aren't as impressive as your run-of-the-mill vampire; there's this near-constant effect that makes it look like him and his nemesis are turning into smoke, but except for this thing where they Morb out and get all gaunt and fangy, no such luck; mostly they just jump around like Spiders-Man and I guess that Morby can fly but they don't do an awful lot of that, and also very late in the game he can control bats, maybe a sequel would just have them discovering more powers. I dunno. We'll probably never know.
Also, I figured that Toomes was stuck into the mid-credit scenes because Michael Keaton was getting tired of waiting to get back into the MCU with the Sinister Six thing that they seemed to be setting up, and there were some sort of plans to do a kinda-superhero thing with another version of the group probably including Venom. Maybe they'll still do it? Who knows that, either. We're supposed to be getting a Kraven movie and one with Madam Web.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:20 PM on May 13, 2023
Also, I figured that Toomes was stuck into the mid-credit scenes because Michael Keaton was getting tired of waiting to get back into the MCU with the Sinister Six thing that they seemed to be setting up, and there were some sort of plans to do a kinda-superhero thing with another version of the group probably including Venom. Maybe they'll still do it? Who knows that, either. We're supposed to be getting a Kraven movie and one with Madam Web.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:20 PM on May 13, 2023
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posted by Don.Kinsayder at 3:09 PM on April 3, 2022