Morbius (2022)

(Amazon Streaming, October 2022) As a middle-aged film fan with an active critical history going back to the 1990s, it’s fun to see younger generations periodically designate a new movie as the worst of all time, ready to be bashed as the latest critical piñata. Not everyone can tell tales of watching Battlefield Earth in theatres, after all, and trying to argue that the real “worst movies of all times” are unwatchable heaps of garbage that never got any theatrical distribution is missing the point: Famous bad movies are cultural references. They’re campfires around which we can calibrate the notion of criticism; they’re touchpoints that act as communal shorthand. In other words, they’re more important than you think. Morbius’ accession to the stygian depths of consensus opinion has been interesting, and it fits within a film-business framework dominated by bland-and-competent superhero movies coldly calculated in boardrooms. It’s almost a relief to see one come out as misshapen and irritating—the entertainment-industrial complex is not perfect, after all, and duds happen despite everyone’s incentive to do well. The problems with Morbius are numerous and sad rather than entertaining. Picking a character that acts like a pretentious 1990s goth teenager was weird enough in the first place, and having him portrayed by as obnoxious an actor as Jared Leto compounded the problem. Fitting everything in a Spider-Man Cinematic Universe that no one really wants is another issue (the least said about the mid-credit sequence the best), and using a lame script that would have felt dated in 2000 (vampires as heroes, wow!) is just hammering the stake further in. The problems go down to some baffling individual scene (sure, the shaking-the-kitty-litter-box thing is unexplainable, but what about the physics of flying ahead of a subway car?) except that there really aren’t that many of those gems—in the end, Morbius is just thuddingly dull. No wonder the critical derision about the film was all about imagining a better movie all the way to the immortal “It’s Morbin’ Time!”—I knew beforehand that line was not in the film and I still missed it. So, hate Morbius all you want, new movie fans—it deserves it, and its roasting provides a bit of soul-warming reassurance that we’re not just accepting all-encompassing cinematic universes uncritically.