The Marvel Cinematic Universe's newest superhero isn't, in the traditional sense, either "super" or "hero," but he has an unorthodox disease and a strange skill-set that sets him apart from mere mortals. His name is Morbius, and looking at his origin story, you might have a feeling that strings are crossed somewhere in the cinematic multiverse.
The film begins with a helicopter carrying a cage to the mist-covered island you'd expect King Kong to live in. But Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) is trying to catch the small game as he reaches the mouth of a cave, spinning with difficulty on two crutches-like canes.
Positioning himself behind the strings of the cage, he opened the palm of his hand and, as the bat roared from inside the cave, murmured to the copter pilot "If you're about to run, do it now."
Born with a rare blood disease, Michael Morbius has spent his entire life working on two things – a cure, and origami paper-folding. Nech, he has to link the bat and human DNA together.
Because the FDA will be unlikely to approve human trials, he and his handsome co-researcher Martin (Adria Arjona) head into a cargo ship headed for international waters off the coast of Long Island in the company of eight thug mercenaries — think Bloodbags. — and once Morbius has been injected with bat DNA, it's only a matter of time before things turn vampiric.
Be aware that some side effects from dabbling in "chiropter-y" are less terrible than others. Bat DNA clearly gives you great cheekbones and abs to go with the increased strength and speed.
Less beneficial effects include new fangs that grow out of his gums with decay that has ripened for decades, and claws that are already pierced by his fingers. I mean sure...why not? Except that this is a man whose hair has the kind of shine that comes from brushing three times a day.
One more thing: He now needs to drink human blood every six hours. Happily, on his way to decline the Nobel Prize, Dr. Morbius invented "artificial blood", although it only fools his system for a short while.
That means Leto's Morbius gets the purple smoke effects to go along with those fang-baring snarls as he's riding the air currents in subway tunnels, while likewise suffering Hyde to his Jekyll — a schoolboy. As played by an amusingly hopped-up Matt Smith, the blue-ish vapor trails and enjoys snappier lines.
But there is not much tension in his story. or logic. At one point, Morbius overhears some counterfeiters passing out counterfeit $100s, and his printing press appears to be an artificial-blood machine—because the technologies for counterfeit-bills and fake-bloods coincide? Maybe it would work better in a comic book.
Leto is as persuasively haunted by the dark side of the vigilante, as Pattinson was, and is perhaps more determined to avoid being the villain, as a result of the corporate situation. Not unlike Venom, Morbius was a bad guy when he first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man comics in the 1970s. If a franchise is to be built around him, he needs to be an anti-hero, at least for now.
But the bad guy/batsman...who will say? As the trailer reveals, another DC Bat-man, Michael Keaton, appears in his non-Batty baddie Marvel persona Adrian Tomes, just to mess with the head of someone trying to keep the cinematic universes straight. For.
But while the bloodlines will have to be clarified in the more robust “Morbius” episode to come, this origin story is merely substantial, and by Marvel standards, a bit anemic.