SPOILERS FOR A RECENTLY RELEASED FILM
FULL SPOILERS, WHY THE HELL NOT

I’d say it feels good to be back, but really it’s just good to have an outlet for all the dumb shit I want to say. Morbius is a perfect target, because it’s a buckwild film. I get what they were trying to do, but… the movie’s a mess from top to bottom. For the last 20 years, there’s apparently been some intern at Sony who really, really wants to make a Sinister Six movie and people keep letting him throw in story seeds, but apparently no one has the heart to tell him they all suck.

Dr. Michael Morbius (Mr. Jared Leto, AKA the Joker in the first Suicide Squad) is suffering from a terminal case of Unspecified Blood Disease, as is his friend Lucian Milo (Matt Smith, AKA the Eleventh Doctor). Realizing a cure could come from vampire bats, Morbius edits his genetics and accidentally turns himself into a vampire. Whoops. Not a standard one where sunlight is harmful, but a living vampire as the comics love to call him. Lucian Milo wants the cure as well, but Michael views it as a curse since he murdered a bunch of nameless goons while under a severe bloodlust. So of course Lucian Milo steals the cure and becomes an evil vampire. Why is he evil? Uh… well one time when he was a sick little boy, some bullies were kicking the shit out of him and he got mad. Clearly that was setting up his heel turn, or something. Anyway, Morbius’ girlfriend, Martine (Adria Arjona) dies, but gets some of his blood in her mouth. Do I really have to say that the movie proper ends with a tease that she’s now a vampire, too, or is that just assumed? The final showdown is Morbius versus Lucian Milo, and the villainous vamp is vanquished. We get what’s supposed to be an emotional moment that just drives me insane (more on that later).

The mid-credits scenes involve Adrian Toomes, AKA the Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming. Due to the multiversal shenanigans in Spider-Man: No Way Home, he gets teleported to the Venom/Morbius universe. He rebuilds his Vulture suit apparently ignoring the fact that he built the first one out of alien technology, somehow blames Spider-Man for him going to another dimension, and wants to team up with Morbius. The Sinister Six intern strikes again. Oh, and that scene you saw of him in the trailer? Not in the movie. That happened a lot, actually. In fact, just about all the scenes in the trailer that had viewers wondering what continuity this movie took place in were cut.

So Morbius dealt psychic damage to both me and my husband. For him, just about every dumb plot decision made him wonder what the hell they were smoking when Sony approved the final draft. But me? I can’t be normal, so my biggest issue was with Lucian Milo. You may have noticed the strikethrough text, and the reason for that is Milo’s real name is Lucian. Child Morbius dismissively calls him Milo, and then everyone else calls him Milo for the rest of his life. The emotional beat at the end is a dying Milo pleading with Morbius–classic “I didn’t think this all the way through” villain behavior–saying that Morbius gave him his name. But it’s so, so dumb. Why call him Milo? If it was for this emotional beat, it failed to make anyone care. And it’s not something you can blame on the comics, because Milo/Lucian to the best of my knowledge is an original character with no real comic book parallel. Milo’s name just gets added on the pile of questionable choices Sony continues to make with the Spider-Man franchise independent of Disney/Marvel.

Can’t wait for Kraven the Hunter next year!

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