Every Morbius Trailer Scene Not In The Movie
This post was updated on April 5, 2022.
Well, Marvel fans, the time is finally upon us, and those who have been curious for literally years at this point can finally head to a theater to see "Morbius." The latest Marvel Comics adaptation from Sony Pictures, given the green light in the wake of the success of "Venom," has been delayed more times than worth recounting — but Jared Leto's latest superhero endeavor following his turn as Joker in "Suicide Squad" is here.
One thing those who head to theaters will probably notice is that several scenes from the trailers didn't actually make the final cut. But upon closer inspection, there were actually a lot of shots from the trailers that were either changed or axed entirely in the film's long journey to the screen.
We're here to go over everything we found and try to figure out what exactly happened between the time that first teaser trailer dropped and now. Let's dig in.
Warning: major spoilers ahead for "Morbius." Proceed with caution.
Humming Beethoven
The initial teaser trailer for this movie came out more than two years ago. Let us never forget that. And it's very clear a whole lot changed between then and even when the final trailer came out. That said, the original teaser has Beethoven's "Fur Elise" as the music bed, and Leto's Dr. Michael Morbius can be heard humming the tune in the trailer. This is not something that ended up in the final product in any way shape or form.
'You've been missing for two months'
I will go into this a bit more later but a lot of dialogue was switched around between what was in the trailers and what ended up in the actual version of "Morbius" we got to see. One very interesting bit of cut dialogue from the trailers comes from Tyrese Gibson's Simon Stroud, a detective hot on Michael's heels throughout the film. In the trailer, he mentions to the good doctor, "you've been missing for two months" before being "found" on a container ship. This differs wildly from what happens in the actual movie. He is not missing for months and he isn't even technically found on the ship as he jumps overboard and is found later in the city. So this implies that not just scenes were changed, but whole story beats were shuffled around pretty significantly in editing beyond that first trailer.
Lifting a heavy artifact
"Morbius" has an admittedly weak sequence where the hero discovers his powers, with Leto working in his lab sort of figuring out what he can do while drinking artificial blood. In the trailers, there is a beat (glimpsed above) that sees him lifting a gigantic, heavy artifact of some kind (it looks like a tomb or a sarcophagus). This is not seen in the actual film and could have just been trimmed to tighten things up. It's unclear.
'A form of bat radar'
Getting to another bit of swapped-around dialogue, in the main trailer Michael mentions that he has "a form of bat radar" as a result of his experimentation. In the movie, a version of this line appears, but he punctuates it by actually using the phrase echolocation which makes him sound a bit smarter, which makes sense, given that he is supposed to be a brilliant scientist and should indeed know the right words for these things.
Matt Smith walking
Here, we have a bit of a deceptive moment that was altered from the trailers to the final product. We see Matth Smith's Milo walking in the subway in human form in the trailer. However, in the actual film, he is in full-blown vampire mode with lots of CGI and maybe some makeup. It's pretty clear that they left this shot as human Smith so as to not spoil the reveal of the villain, or at least that's the version of it that makes this seem less messy and weird. In any event, a wildly different version of this shot is actually in the final product. It's not uncommon to edit trailer shots, as we saw with the "Spider-Man: No Way Home" trailer, so this one kind of makes sense.
'Dr. Michael Morbius, at your service'
One line that was used a lot in the marketing, even to punctuate the main trailer, was Leto doing away with some thugs. When one of them asks who he is, he replies, "I am Venom" and then hisses at the guy. He then pats the crook on the shoulder and says he's kidding before adding, "Dr. Michael Morbius, at your service." While the first part of the line does still appear in the movie, the second bit was cut out for reasons that are not clear. It is a bit odd to lean so heavily on this in the marketing and then not actually have it in the movie, but there's a lot of that at play here. It's also kind of weird to have your main character claim he's someone from a completely different movie.
The Oscorp building
I'll add a disclaimer here and say it's possible it could have been a blink-and-you-miss-it thing in the actual version of "Morbius" in theaters right now, but in the trailers, there was a pretty prominent shot of the Oscorp building in the skyline. This heavily implied that Norman Osborn and maybe even Harry Osborn were present in this universe. But it appears that Sony may have cut the building out in the final edit. Why do that? Could it have something to do with that post-credits scene and the studio's future plans? It's tough to say right now but this is a notable omission.
Jared Harris on the park bench
Jared Harris' Emil Nikols had an important role to play in "Morbius" as the doctor who helped both Michael and Milo throughout their lives. However, his actual screen time is not all that significant for an actor of Harris' caliber. It appears that he originally might have had a meatier part, as the trailers contained a pretty healthy chat between Emil and Michael on a park bench. Yet, in the movie, this scene was removed entirely. Again, this leads us to believe that the movie was heavily restructured through reshoots and editing, and Harris may have lost out on some screen time in the process.
Tyrese's cybernetic arm
In the original teaser trailer, there is a shot of Tyrese Gibson's character Simon Stroud with a pretty beefed-up mechanical arm. In an interview back in 2020, the actor even said "that arm has all kinds of special effects and powers." Yet, in the actual movie we never, ever really see the arm, nor does it have any powers. The only even vague reference we get to it is when Simon tells Michael that his synthetic blood saved his arm after he suffered an injury in war. But that's about it, and this points to a pretty big change that this character went through in the extended editing process of this movie.
The scene with Adrian Toomes and Morbius
This is without a doubt the biggest of the big scenes that didn't make it into the movie. We've known for literally years that Michael Keaton's Adrian Toomes, aka Vulture, was going to be in "Morbius," which kind of implied that the movie existed in the MCU, since he was the villain in "Spider-Man: Homecoming." The scene from the trailers saw him actually speaking with Michael more directly in an alleyway in handcuffs and a jumpsuit. This did not happen in the movie and, instead, Keaton only appears in post-credits scenes that were incredibly different than what we saw in the trailers. There is no line where Toomes says "become what you're meant to be" to Morbius, and no interaction in the alleyway. It appears the whole multiverse rip from "No Way Home" completely altered Sony's thinking on how to handle this, and it was made all the messier and head-scratching for it.
The Spider-Man graffiti wall
Another gigantic, eye-grabbing scene from the trailers was Leto running by a wall with graffiti of Spider-Man on it (a Spider-Man that looks a lot more like Tobey Maguire's version, mind you) with "murderer" painted across it. This appears to be after Michael broke out of jail, but it doesn't really matter because this was axed from the movie entirely. Is it that the brass at Marvel Studios didn't want Spider-Man appearing so directly in this universe? Or is it that Sony decided to shift gears? The post-credits scene does make mention of Spider-Man, so we know one exists in this universe anyway, which makes it even odder that this shot was removed. Much to process, much to consider.
Lots and lots of dialogue
To punctuate this whole thing, I should mention that going over the trailers again after seeing the movie a whole lot of little bits of dialogue stood out. Without going over them with a fine-toothed comb once the Blu-ray comes out, it would be tough to pick it all apart, but lots and lots of lines were changed from the trailers to the final film. It's a clear example that Sony (or director Daniel Espinosa) was still figuring a lot out even after the movie was "finished" ahead of its original planned release two years ago. One can't help but wonder about the discussion we'd be having if the original version of the movie had indeed hit theaters a couple of years back.
"Morbius" is in theaters now.