Morbius (Sony/Marvel vampire movie)

[13 schoolyards]

Having actually seen this (it's totally forgettable but like the last Venom, only going for 90 minutes gets it a little bit of undeserved goodwill), it seems to take place in

Spoiler alert

the same universe as Venom - there's a mention of "that incident in San Francisco". There's also a copy of The Daily Bugle shown (so it's a newspaper, not a website like in the "main" MCU) and possibly they also now have a Spider-Man we don't see? One of the end credit scenes with Keaton as The Vulture has him saying "I don't know what's going on but I think it has something to do with Spider-Man" and the person he's talking to doesn't immediately say "who the fuck is Spider-Man?" so who knows

[close]

Unless this massively bombs to a shocking extent it's pretty clear Sony are going to keep on pushing towards a Sinister Six movie that nobody wants.

[Dayraven]

No Way Home was pretty much a Sinister Six film already (even though the sixth member went off to get drunk at a bar instead).

[surreal]

Probably not going to bother with this but the talk above of a

Spoiler alert

different universe

[close]

- could Sony do

Spoiler alert

their own Spider-Man with a different actor and leave Tom Holland to the MCU

[close]

for these movies?  It's been shown it's possible and may even make more sense.

[Mister Six]

Probably not going to bother with this but the talk above of a

Spoiler alert

different universe

[close]

- could Sony do

Spoiler alert

their own Spider-Man with a different actor and leave Tom Holland to the MCU

[close]

for these movies?  It's been shown it's possible and may even make more sense.

Oh god, they're going to do live-action Miles Morales, aren't they? If the agreement with Marvel Studios allows them to. Maybe they'll have to save him for a Sinister Six film, like how Marvel can only use Hulk as a supporting character now. That would actually be a pretty neat inversion of how these things usually work. Although being Sony, they'll still fuck it up.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm looking forward to a "Here's All The People You Forgot Were Once In The Avengers" movie.

[Goldentony]

cant wait to fucking cheer SMYTHE in the cinema

[dissolute ocelot]

I'm looking forward to a "Here's All The People You Forgot Were Once In The Avengers" movie.

They already did that with Wandavision.

[JamesTC]

To explain the link to the MCU and all that:

Morbius Spoiler

Michael Keaton is playing the exact same character as the one from Homecoming. He arrives in the Venom/Morbius universe following a big purple rift opening up (as seen at the end of No Way Home). There is then a very pointed news report talking of a man under the name "Adrian Toomes" appearing in a cell out of nowhere, and it is expected he will be released from prison.

I think it is fair to explain away the fact that he wasn't returned to his universe as a result of it being a result of villains of Spider-Man being sent back to their universe and Vulture just being caught up in that and just being accidentally sent(he was still alive in the main MCU universe as of No Way Home but just locked up in prison).

Then in the final mid-credit sequence, Adrian Toomes in full Vulture gear and meets up with Morbius saying that he is there because of something he assumes Spider-Man has done (referring to the Tom Holland version of Spider-Man).

[close]

The film is absolutely awful. For a film so simple, it doesn't even make sense and it is tonally all over the place. Matt Smith does his best, as you'd expect.

Can somebody who has also seen it please explain this from the ending, as it makes fuck all sense to me:

Spoiler alert

So Morbius makes two vials to kill Matt Smith and himself. He then kills Matt Smith but doesn't kill himself. I think I nodded off for a few seconds near the end so may have missed a line, but they don't seem to explain why/how Morbius can go on living. He spends most of the film talking about how he can't survive on the artificial blood.

[close]

[Mister Six]

I might just wait for a supercut of the Matt Smith scenes. Or torrent it and then scrub through to his bits (fnarr).

[Ron Maels Moustache]

God, the reviews for this have this have been stinking. Sounds like an absolute disaster.

Matt Smith doesn't have a lot of luck with big franchise movies, does he. Maybe he should fire his agent.

[13 schoolyards]

To explain the link to the MCU and all that:

Morbius Spoiler

Michael Keaton is playing the exact same character as the one from Homecoming. He arrives in the Venom/Morbius universe following a big purple rift opening up (as seen at the end of No Way Home). There is then a very pointed news report talking of a man under the name "Adrian Toomes" appearing in a cell out of nowhere, and it is expected he will be released from prison.

I think it is fair to explain away the fact that he wasn't returned to his universe as a result of it being a result of villains of Spider-Man being sent back to their universe and Vulture just being caught up in that and just being accidentally sent(he was still alive in the main MCU universe as of No Way Home but just locked up in prison).

Then in the final mid-credit sequence, Adrian Toomes in full Vulture gear and meets up with Morbius saying that he is there because of something he assumes Spider-Man has done (referring to the Tom Holland version of Spider-Man).

[close]

The film is absolutely awful. For a film so simple, it doesn't even make sense and it is tonally all over the place. Matt Smith does his best, as you'd expect.

Can somebody who has also seen it please explain this from the ending, as it makes fuck all sense to me:

Spoiler alert

So Morbius makes two vials to kill Matt Smith and himself. He then kills Matt Smith but doesn't kill himself. I think I nodded off for a few seconds near the end so may have missed a line, but they don't seem to explain why/how Morbius can go on living. He spends most of the film talking about how he can't survive on the artificial blood.

[close]

From what I can dimly remember, he just says that the artificial blood's effectiveness is waning and will eventually be useless, but it's still sort of doing the job by the end

Spoiler alert

plus he drinks his dying fiance, who then does die so there's another living vampire out there now

[close]

I think the idea is meant to be that without Smith also running around chomping on people and setting the cops after him, Morbius'll be free to actually try and work on fixing his condition or improving the artificial blood or whatever. But that could just be a very generous reading of what's actually said, which is pretty much fuck all.

[Mister Six]

Maybe he'll just go around murdering people, and we can all have a good old chuckle about it, like in Venom.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I'm just back from seeing this. I didn't particularly want to watch it, but my friend didn't want to see Sonic 2 without having seen the first one and neither of us could be arsed sitting through three hours of The Batman again.

Maybe my standards are too low, but I didn't think it was terrible. It's not good, by any means (and it's certainly not going to trouble Blade for the title of best Marvel vampire flick) it's just blandly mediocre. It's a shame for director Daniel Espinoza, whose previous film, Life was a pretty good little creature feature (if derivative).

The film's biggest problem is that it's been pared down to the bone marrow. It just rushes through with barely a moment to let any plot points breathe. We got about five minutes of Morbius thinking he'd committed murder (while barely acting like he gave a fuck) then all tension was dissipated and we pretty much rushed straight into the final act about halfway through.

Problem number 2: It had vampires and a 15 rating, so where was all the blood? I'm pretty sure if they just cut out the few swearwords it would have qualified as a 12. None of that action scenes seemed like they should harm anyone's delicate sensibilities - especially as they were mostly obscured by that swirly effect.

Matt Smith and Al Madrigal injected a bit of fun into it, but the most interesting thing about the whole thing was...

Spoiler alert

One minute of Michael Keaton!

That was largely due to how little it made sense though: How did he get his new flying machine? The original one was built by his nerdy friend from salvaged alien technology, both of which are in a different universe. Also, I know prison changes a man, but is he not utterly distraught that he might never see his wife and daughter again?

That last point doesn't bode well for his future appearances. As great as Keaton is, Vulture worked so well in Spider-Man's Homecoming because he had a strong motivation and was a good foil to the heroes. Chucking him into a universe where he has no relationships loses all of that and just makes him a generic baddie.

[close]

The second most interesting thing was that it had two actors named Jared.

[dissolute ocelot]

I'm just back from seeing this. I didn't particularly want to watch it, but my friend didn't want to see Sonic 2 without having seen the first one and neither of us could be arsed sitting through three hours of The Batman again.

Maybe my standards are too low, but I didn't think it was terrible. It's not good, by any means (and it's certainly not going to trouble Blade for the title of best Marvel vampire flick) it's just blandly mediocre. It's a shame for director Daniel Espinoza, whose previous film, Life was a pretty good little creature feature (if derivative).

The film's biggest problem is that it's been pared down to the bone marrow. It just rushes through with barely a moment to let any plot points breathe. We got about five minutes of Morbius thinking he'd committed murder (while barely acting like he gave a fuck) then all tension was dissipated and we pretty much rushed straight into the final act about halfway through.

Problem number 2: It had vampires and a 15 rating, so where was all the blood? I'm pretty sure if they just cut out the few swearwords it would have qualified as a 12. None of that action scenes seemed like they should harm anyone's delicate sensibilities - especially as they were mostly obscured by that swirly effect.

It was a PG-13 in the USA, so that probably explains the low violence levels.

I don't really like super-long films, but if some superhero/comic-book movies are 2 1/2 or 3 hours and some are 100 minutes, you're not going to get the same level of storytelling in both. (Although American cinemas have apparently started charging different money for different films, with The Batman costing more.) An origin story needs enough space to set up the characters and tell the origin and then have a proper action plot.

[dissolute ocelot]

I seem to be posting here a lot for a film I haven't seen but I loved this Indiewire headline:

'Morbius': Confusing Post-Credits Scenes Hint at Incoherent Twists for the Spider-Verse

[Mister Six]

Granted, I haven't seen the film and probably won't (although Mrs Six is making me watch Black Widow, so who knows?) but from what I gather, part of Morbius's problem is that he needs to feed on human beings. Thing is, this is set in the same universe as Venom, which plays the protagonist eating people for laughs.

So, per the rules and tone established in the first film in this cinematic franchise, why not just feed on human traffickers, murderers etc? We've established that Venom eating the brain of a two-bit convenience store robber (who might not even have a loaded gun) is basically fine and worthy of a "funny" ending sequence, so why not just have Morbius chowing down left, right and centre?

This is the problem with a Sinister Six film, and a universe populated by anti-heroes: you need a hero-hero for it to mean anything. Venom works in Marvel comics because he bounces off your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man. Venom as the lead of a franchise is just weird.

[The Culture Bunker]

This is the problem with a Sinister Six film, and a universe populated by anti-heroes: you need a hero-hero for it to mean anything. Venom works in Marvel comics because he bounces off your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man. Venom as the lead of a franchise is just weird.

I really thought they were going in that direction with yer actual Spider-Man films, having already introduced Vulture, Shocker, Scorpion (sort of) and Mysterio. Bring in, I dunno, Chameleon and Kraven the Hunter with Kingpin the one funding them all, because he's fucked off with Spider-Man (and maybe Daredevil) getting in the way. But I guess that was just me over-thinking things.

[Mister Six]

I totally forgot about Shocker.

What's the business with Scorpion? I don't recall anyone like that in the Holland movies.

Other than Kraven, what other reasonably recognisable-but-unused Spider-villains are left for Holland before they have to start recycling from the Maguire/Garfield films? Just Black Cat, right? After that you're scraping the barrel with C-list mooks like Hammerhead and Tombstone.

[The Culture Bunker]

I totally forgot about Shocker.

What's the business with Scorpion? I don't recall anyone like that in the Holland movies.

He's the lad doing an arms deal with Vulture on the ship, before Spider-Man busts in (and nearly gets everyone killed doing so). He has a scorpion tattoo on his neck, and I'm pretty sure he's referred to as Mac Gargan. At the end, he meets up with Vulture in clink, where the latter denies he knows Spider-Man's true identity.

[Mister Six]

Ahhh right. So they can bring him in as a "proper" baddie at least, then.

[stonkers]

Other than Kraven, what other reasonably recognisable-but-unused Spider-villains are left for Holland before they have to start recycling from the Maguire/Garfield films? Just Black Cat, right? After that you're scraping the barrel with C-list mooks like Hammerhead and Tombstone.

Not to mention they already have recycled vilains. Between the Sony and Marvel movies we've basically had Dr Octopus twice and Green Goblin four times. And two Venoms for that matter. Sony are doing a Kraven movie as well so they really are getting deep in the bench.

I guess there's Vince D'Onofrio Kingpin but I can't really see him as an MCU Spidey main villain.

[Famous Mortimer]

Perhaps they ought to create their own characters for Spidey to fight, like DC did with Harley Quinn. Can't be any worse than some of the villains they've already got.

[elliszeroed]

Judas Traveller? Kaine? The Jackal?

Spidey fans know where I'm going with this...

Spidercide!!!

[The Culture Bunker]

Spider-Man villains that I know (from reading the comics about 30/35 years ago) that haven't been used yet:

Chameleon
Hobgoblin
Tombstone
Hammerhead (chortle)

I was going to add Hydro-Man, but I guess he "sort of" turned up in 'Far From Home' as one of Mysterio's illusions.

[Mister Six]

Not to mention they already have recycled vilains. Between the Sony and Marvel movies we've basically had Dr Octopus twice and Green Goblin four times. And two Venoms for that matter. Sony are doing a Kraven movie as well so they really are getting deep in the bench.

I guess there's Vince D'Onofrio Kingpin but I can't really see him as an MCU Spidey main villain.

Not counting No Way Home, the Doc Ocks, Venoms and Green Goblins have all been Sony Pictures (Maguire/Garfield/Hardy) or Sony Pictures Animation (Spiderverse). Marvel hasn't used any of them. But No Way Home might make it awkward to introduce them now, especially as it reinforced Dafoe and Molina as the definitive GG and Doc Ock.

Then again, what choice will they have, if Sony keeps churning out its shite Secret Six films?

I could see Kingpin in the next film, plus some low-tier superpowered mooks, but the main plot being  about Peter's relationship with Black Cat. Or bringing in Daredevil as a supporting character since they established him in No Way Home and that show is now on Disney+. All three might be a bit overstuffed though.

Beyond that, I think they really will be scraping the enemy barrel.

Shit, they're going to end up doing the Clone Saga, aren't they?

[Mister Six]

I suppose they could bring Mysterio back - his tech team are still out there, right? Some of them must have made the video incriminating Peter, at least.

[Magnum Valentino]

Spider-Man villains that I know (from reading the comics about 30/35 years ago) that haven't been used yet:

Chameleon
Hobgoblin
Tombstone
Hammerhead (chortle)

I was going to add Hydro-Man, but I guess he "sort of" turned up in 'Far From Home' as one of Mysterio's illusions.

Spider-Man villains that I know (from reading the comics about 30/35 years ago) that haven't been used yet:

Chameleon
Hobgoblin
Tombstone
Hammerhead (chortle)

I was going to add Hydro-Man, but I guess he "sort of" turned up in 'Far From Home' as one of Mysterio's illusions.

Molten Man, too. Doesn't count though. I loved Rob Paulsen as Hydro Man in the old cartoon, pining after Mary Jane.

Can't understand the Hammerhead hate on these boards, between chortling and ranking him as a c-lister. Hammerhead rules! He's a fucking pinstripe mobster with a chatter gun and a metal head! Once he was a ghost!

[The Culture Bunker]

Can't understand the Hammerhead hate on these boards, between chortling and ranking him as a c-lister. Hammerhead rules! He's a fucking pinstripe mobster with a chatter gun and a metal head! Once he was a ghost!

No hate from me, it's just the absurdity of his gimmick that amuses me - that his thing was basically "head down and charge, hope for the best".

Plus when I think of him, I always sing that Alanis Morrisette song to the words of the Adam and Joe version from 'Stars Wars in Their Eyes': "cause my head is like a hammer, and a hammer is like my head".

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Judas Traveller? Kaine? The Jackal?

Spidey fans know where I'm going with this...

Spidercide!!!

Fuck, how long before they introduce Ben Reilly into some iteration of the Spideyfilms? Now I've thought it, it has to happen doesn't it.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Hammerhead was decent as the main villain in the PS4 Spider-Man game's DLC campaign. That said, he was basically just a generic mobster. Also, I don't see how his gimmick is all that threatening, when Spidey can dodge gunfire.

Hydroman can't be a big baddie. He's too wet.