One Of The Worst Marvel Movies Ever Made Is Killing It On Prime Video
The off-brand Marvel movie "Morbius" is crushing the Amazon Prime Video charts, so it looks like "fans" of this Sony-Marvel collaboration want "more-bius."
Okay, sorry. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I'm thrilled to report that, according to FlixPatrol, the 2022 movie "Morbius" is one of the most-watched videos on Amazon's streaming platform. Why am I so happy about this? Frankly, it's because I'm sort of obsessed with "Morbius" — not as a movie, per se, but as a concept. That's because, if we're being honest, "Morbius" can barely even be called a movie. Directed by Daniel Espinoza and written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, "Morbius" faced a number of delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that didn't do the film any favors when it did eventually release in March 2022; it was still abjectly terrible, paving the way for other overtly crappy movies in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, or the SSU, like "Madame Web" and "Kraven the Hunter."
The movie, if you can call it that, stars Jared Leto (who is terrible) as Dr. Michael Morbius, who suffers from a nebulous blood illness and then becomes a "living vampire." Leto is flanked by Matt Smith (who is having entirely too much fun) as Michael's childhood best friend Lucien, whom Michael starts calling Milo for no reason, as well as future "Hit Man" star Adria Arjona, stuck in a thankless role as Michael's colleague and potential love interest Dr. Martine Bancroft. Also, Jared Harris from "Mad Men" and "Chernobyl" is in this movie. Okay, so what else do we need to know about "Morbius," a truly awful movie that won a ton of Golden Raspberry Awards and somehow got not one, but two theatrical releases?
Here's what Morbius is about, insofar as Morbius is about anything at all
Okay, remember that blood illness? Lucien, who Michael dubs "Milo" for literally no reason while the two boys live at a Greek hospital under the care of Dr. Emil Nicholas (Jared Harris), has the same issue, so it's good news for him when Michael develops his artificial blood (a discovery so momentous that he's offered a Nobel Prize, which Michael rejects for no apparent reason whatsoever). Instead of using the artificial blood to cure himself, Michael, who we're told is a genius, decides he's going to splice vampire bat genes with his own for a cure; instead, he just gets bitten by them while he's experimenting with them on a cargo ship in international waters. The movie goes so far as to put up a title card telling us that these "international waters" are just off the coast of Long Island, and I'm not kidding when I say I think about that title card, like, once a day.
Obviously, Michael becomes a vampire, and then Milo also becomes a vampire, but Milo is evil, which presents a problem. Saddled with terrible CGI and a worse script — which conspicuously doesn't include the line "it's Morbin' time," a meme about the movie that ultimately gained a life of its own — Michael has to stop and kill Milo with the help of his ... army of bats. (This movie rocks.) After turning Martine into a vampire to save her life, Michael meets Michael Keaton's Adrian Toomes in a post-credits scene where they discuss fighting Spider-Man, but because the SSU died a sad death after the failure of "Kraven the Hunter," that never happens, and it's very apparent that Keaton filmed said scene on a green screen without being anywhere near Jared Leto. It's all extremely funny, but the movie's re-release is even funnier.
Morbius turned into such a massive joke that Sony saw fit to re-release it in theaters — and it flopped a second time
So what exactly happened with the "Morbius" re-release? Were audiences really clamoring for "more-bius?" (Oops! I did it again!) They definitely weren't, but a lot of memes sprang into existence to commemorate just how bad "Morbius" is, and Sony took all the wrong lessons from this trending topic. Calling "Morbius" bad actually feels like an understatement; it feels illegal to even call it a "movie." The March release of "Morbius" performed disastrously at the box office; despite a strong opening of $39 million, it experienced a drop of over 70% between its first and second weekends, which is flat-out incredible (in a bad way). Then, later in the year, Sony noticed that people were posting about "Morbius" and apparently didn't read any of the actual posts, all of which were soundly mocking the attempt at a film. As a result, they re-released the movie in June of 2022, and it flopped again, raking in a truly sad weekend total of under $300,000. Sony eventually tried to claim that the movie managed to make some sort of profit, but honestly, is that even the point?
"Morbius" isn't a "so bad, it's good" movie. It's not a future cult classic. It is, honestly, not fun to watch in literally any way. For whatever reason, though, people are checking it out on Amazon Prime, so if you're looking for some, uh, "morbin' time," you can watch it there now.