Morbius

[Palanan]

Trailer's been out for quite a while, but doesn't seem to have drawn much discussion.





Never heard of this character myself, but there do seem to be some Spidey connections.

Can't say it really draws me, and I'm not sure where exactly it fits into everything. If it does at all.

.

[Imbalance]

He's a bit more obscure, but has carried his own comic title plenty of times.

Should be a better vampire movie than Twilight, probly not as good as Blade.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Trailer's been out for quite a while, but doesn't seem to have drawn much discussion.

Probably because the movie got delayed until next year; also it’s a SUMaC movie so same universe as Venom, and thus its status in regards to the MCU is...iffy.

I’m only familiar with the 90’s Spider-man incarnation of the character, so all I can say with any certainty is that he won’t have the cartoon character’s lovely accent, nor will he be shouting ‘Felicia!’ at any point during the movie because I gather he has a different love interest in it. It’s also too soon to see if he’ll be sucking plasma with his hands or biting like a normal vampire, but I gather the former was a censorship thing anyway. I’m going to miss the accent though.

I liked the trailer, but some comments Leto made about the script make me a little worried about the movie. I hope it does well, because I’d really like for Marvel/Disney to not be the only source of good super hero movies.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Imbalance
Should be a better vampire movie than Twilight, probly not as good as Blade.

Man, that’s a low bar.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
…also it’s a SUMaC movie….

What does this mean? For me, sumac is a term for several plant species, one of which has beautiful fall colors and another which can cause poison-ivy-like symptoms.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I liked the trailer, but some comments Leto made about the script make me a little worried about the movie.

Hmm. What in particular?

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I hope it does well, because I’d really like for Marvel/Disney to not be the only source of good super hero movies.

I’m so burned out on superhero movies that I’m pretty indifferent on this point. Beyond that, “maybe-MCU does a vampire flick” isn’t an especially strong draw for me.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

What does this mean? For me, sumac is a term for several plant species, one of which has beautiful fall colors and another which can cause poison-ivy-like symptoms.

Sony Universe of Marvel Characters.

Hmm. What in particular?

I’m drawing from memory here, but it was something like ‘you don’t always start with a gem of a script, but you do the best you can with what you’re given.’ He didn’t give details, and I don’t know him as a person or an actor well enough to know what he would consider to be a ‘gem’ or not, it just didn’t sound promising coming from the lead actor. I also gather they’re doing reshoots although that could be good or bad.

I’m so burned out on superhero movies that I’m pretty indifferent on this point. Beyond that, “maybe-MCU does a vampire flick” isn’t an especially strong draw for me.

*shrug* I thoroughly enjoyed Venom, so I’m willing to give it a shot. Might change my mind later, but for right now I’m planning to see it.

EDIT: Found the quote!

“It’s a pressure cooker,” Leto says. “You have a clock ticking. They’re expensive films. And so, all of the decisions and the time to make those decision are a little bit more heated and so it can be a little more stressful. I think it’s more common with these big movies, you don’t really start with a gem of a script.”

“You start with a hope and a dream and an idea of something,” Leto continues. “And you all try to work as hard as you can, in this given amount of time, to make it as good as it can be. And I think it’s the first time I’ve ever starred in a big movie like this in my entire career, so it was new territory. I generally hide out in the shadows.”

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I’m drawing from memory here, but it was something like ‘you don’t always start with a gem of a script, but you do the best you can with what you’re given.’

That is…not good.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I also gather they’re doing reshoots although that could be good or bad.

Nor this.

That said, I had fun with Solo despite its many, many issues.

Also, I know virtually nothing about Jared Leto, and it would at least be nice to see him in a role where he wasn’t being judged on impossible expectations. Here he has the opportunity to create a character with much less of that.

[Tyndmyr]

I’m drawing from memory here, but it was something like ‘you don’t always start with a gem of a script, but you do the best you can with what you’re given.’ He didn’t give details, and I don’t know him as a person or an actor well enough to know what he would consider to be a ‘gem’ or not, it just didn’t sound promising coming from the lead actor. I also gather they’re doing reshoots although that could be good or bad.

That is worrisome. Leto's also not my favorite actor...his Joker was kinda meh. He's been in other movies I've enjoyed(Fight Club, American Psycho) but those roles were...not especially memorable?

I'll probably see it, because Venom was good, but Venom largely was good solely based on the performance of Tom Hardy. So, my expectations are not great.

[BloodSquirrel]

I’m so burned out on superhero movies that I’m pretty indifferent on this point. Beyond that, “maybe-MCU does a vampire flick” isn’t an especially strong draw for me.

I'm pretty burned out on the MCU (I thought I was going watch Wandavision when it was fully released- but hearing that it didn't stick the ending killed all of my interest, and I couldn't even get through the "Falcon and Winter Soldier" trailer), but between this not even being from Disney and not being a, well, superhero, my burnout doesn't really apply to it. It's a vampire flick that's based on a comic book character that I don't expect it to be very faithful to. I'm not super-hyped for it, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

[tomandtish]

*shrug* I thoroughly enjoyed Venom, so I’m willing to give it a shot. Might change my mind later, but for right now I’m planning to see it.

EDIT: Found the quote!

Venom was a decent movie that would have been pretty good if it wasn't called Venom. Like the 2009 Star Trek reboot, it's good but not good at being part of the universe it is trying to be part of.

[Friv]

Also, I know virtually nothing about Jared Leto, and it would at least be nice to see him in a role where he wasn’t being judged on impossible expectations. Here he has the opportunity to create a character with much less of that.

I know entirely too much about Jared Leto and I would like to see him in no role ever again anywhere, but at least he can't do too much damage here.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Venom was a decent movie that would have been pretty good if it wasn't called Venom. Like the 2009 Star Trek reboot, it's good but not good at being part of the universe it is trying to be part of.

??? If you’re talking about the MCU, as I understand it Feige didn’t want Venom in the MCU. Sony doesn’t have the rights to Iron Man etc. so having the Avengers show up for a cameo (and I think Spider-man was included in this, owing to how the contract between Sony/Marvel was set up at the time) isn’t something they could do without cooperation from Marvel.

If you’re talking about SUMaC, Venom is the only movie in that universe presently. There won’t be more in that universe until Venom 2 and/or Morbius comes out.

[Friv]

??? If you’re talking about the MCU, as I understand it Feige didn’t want Venom in the MCU. Sony doesn’t have the rights to Iron Man etc. so having the Avengers show up for a cameo (and I think Spider-man was included in this, owing to how the contract between Sony/Marvel was set up at the time) isn’t something they could do without cooperation from Marvel.

If you’re talking about SUMaC, Venom is the only movie in that universe presently. There won’t be more in that universe until Venom 2 and/or Morbius comes out.

I think the argument is that if Venom was a numbers-filed-off generic sci-fi movie about a bunch of weird symbiotic monsters that want to eat the Earth, only one of them switches sides because he was a picked-on loser monster but he's really cool here on Earth, it would have been a better movie than having it be called Venom with a lead named Eddie Brock and whatever other Marvel references were there (not many, if I recall...)

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I think the argument is that if Venom was a numbers-filed-off generic sci-fi movie about a bunch of weird symbiotic monsters that want to eat the Earth, only one of them switches sides because he was a picked-on loser monster but he's really cool here on Earth, it would have been a better movie than having it be called Venom with a lead named Eddie Brock and whatever other Marvel references were there (not many, if I recall...)

Okay. In what ways would that make it better?

[BloodSquirrel]

Okay. In what ways would that make it better?

I haven't seen Venom, but I can answer this question for a similar movie- Joker.

Calling the movie "Joker" and setting the expectation that I was going to see the main character become the clown prince of crime at the end added a lot of unnecessary confusion to the movie that prevented me from seeing certain things and taking them on their own terms for the first half of the movie. I was highly skeptical that Arthur Fleck was high-functioning enough to ever challenge Batman, which was causing a break in my suspension of disbelief, and the movie felt like it was kind of dragging because the "real plot" hadn't started yet- Arthur was still just ******* around.

Once I realized that my pre-conceived notions about what the movie was about were wrong, it became a very different movie, very quickly.

It actually helped me realize how important going into a movie with the right expectations was. There are a lot of things in movies that rely on the audiences understanding what shorthand is being used to get the point across, and if you're going in with a different set of shorthand in mind, you're going to be missing a lot of the point.

[tomandtish]

??? If you’re talking about the MCU, as I understand it Feige didn’t want Venom in the MCU. Sony doesn’t have the rights to Iron Man etc. so having the Avengers show up for a cameo (and I think Spider-man was included in this, owing to how the contract between Sony/Marvel was set up at the time) isn’t something they could do without cooperation from Marvel.

If you’re talking about SUMaC, Venom is the only movie in that universe presently. There won’t be more in that universe until Venom 2 and/or Morbius comes out.

Sorry. Should be more specific.

It's a good movie, but it's not a good Venom movie. Calling it Venom ties it to Marvel in general (not specifically a film verse), and it just doesn't feel like I'm watching the Marvel villain Venom.

Like the Star Trek reboot. I enjoyed the film just fine until i remembered I was supposed to be watching a Star trek film. Here I was watching a nice modified human vigilante, then I remembered it was supposed to be Venom and get taken right out of it. Honestly felt more like Spawn than venom.

[Friv]

Okay. In what ways would that make it better?

I haven't seen Venom, but I can answer this question for a similar movie- Joker.

Calling the movie "Joker" and setting the expectation that I was going to see the main character become the clown prince of crime at the end added a lot of unnecessary confusion to the movie that prevented me from seeing certain things and taking them on their own terms for the first half of the movie. I was highly skeptical that Arthur Fleck was high-functioning enough to ever challenge Batman, which was causing a break in my suspension of disbelief, and the movie felt like it was kind of dragging because the "real plot" hadn't started yet- Arthur was still just ******* around.

Once I realized that my pre-conceived notions about what the movie was about were wrong, it became a very different movie, very quickly.

It actually helped me realize how important going into a movie with the right expectations was. There are a lot of things in movies that rely on the audiences understanding what shorthand is being used to get the point across, and if you're going in with a different set of shorthand in mind, you're going to be missing a lot of the point.

What Bloodsquirrel said. The Venom movie isn't very good from a script perspective, but the effects are alright and the actors are putting in a lot of effort, so it's fun. However, the less investment you have in the character of Venom or the premise of superhero movies, the better this movie is, and speculation about how it's going to tie into other Sony Marvel stuff just drags it down.

As a stand-alone low-grade sci-fi action piece, it's a solid movie. As the beginning of a Sony Cinematic Superhero Universe, it's going to struggle.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Looks like Morbius got pushed back another week.

[Starbuck_II]

I'm pretty burned out on the MCU (I thought I was going watch Wandavision when it was fully released- but hearing that it didn't stick the ending killed all of my interest, and I couldn't even get through the "Falcon and Winter Soldier" trailer), but between this not even being from Disney and not being a, well, superhero, my burnout doesn't really apply to it. It's a vampire flick that's based on a comic book character that I don't expect it to be very faithful to. I'm not super-hyped for it, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

WandaVision was fine, you heard that it didn't stick ending? You should try it out.


Falcon/Winter deals with the Blip aftermath and Falcon coming to terms with accepting the shield. More gritty realism than fun adventure you may be used to in Captain America.

[Psyren]

Apparently the official name for Sony's comic film universe is not SUMAC but SPUMC.

(So was that actually Vulture, i.e. MCU Vulture, at the end?)

Matt Smith is apparently playing

Spoiler

Show

some Marvel baddie named Loxias Crown, aka Hunger. Another vampire, and apparently evil-er than Morbius, so apparently we're doing the "villain is dark(er) reflection of the hero" formulaic solo origin story here that I was hoping against hope Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel had broken us free from. More's the pity.

[Kitten Champion]

Apparently the official name for Sony's comic film universe is not SUMAC but SPUMC.

(So was that actually Vulture, i.e. MCU Vulture, at the end?)

I can't imagine it not being him, though that highlights how weird this whole endeavor is. Making a shared continuity out of this is like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle when you've already lost the vast majority of the pieces, you're just cramming the few ones you have left and hoping they somehow make a cohesive image.

Matt Smith is apparently playing

Spoiler

Show

some Marvel baddie named Loxias Crown, aka Hunger. Another vampire, and apparently evil-er than Morbius, so apparently we're doing the "villain is dark(er) reflection of the hero" formulaic solo origin story here that I was hoping against hope Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel had broken us free from. More's the pity.

Is there a Morbius villain anyone is pining to see? I mean, yeah, you could take any obscure character and reinvent them to be a top-notch villain for your cinematic adaptation I suppose, but that takes effort.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Is there a Morbius villain anyone is pining to see? I mean, yeah, you could take any obscure character and reinvent them to be a top-notch villain for your cinematic adaptation I suppose, but that takes effort.

Does Blade count? He’s one of those missing pieces but IIRC they had a fun teamup in the 90’s cartoon, I wouldn’t mind seeing him as an antagonist out of the gate and then team up later to fight ‘traditional’ vampires later on.

[Psyren]

That's actually a good point. If we're doing vampires, and there's a true MCU connection thanks to Vulture, how could they not tie these guys into Blade somehow?

...Unless of course Sony bombs it. Morbius IS a bit way late for the vampire craze, so they've returned to being kinda niche as fantasy goes, making the need for a decent film even higher. Not to mention that trailer was a massive pile of cliches ("scientist running short on time/funding tests their research on themselves", "villain is darker reflection of the dark hero", "orphan hero is a loner due to childhood bullying", "love interest is there to be the love interest that is there", etc).

I'll see it for Matt Smith and Michael Keaton but so far this is just Venom without Tom Hardy and without all the fun.

[Psyren]

One interesting direct MCU tie-in I noticed in the trailer:



The graffiti in this shot, an image of Spidey with "murderer" plastered over it, tells us two key things:

1) This is set after Far From Home
2) Mysterio's gambit, to discredit Spidey's character and frame Peter for his death, appears to be working.

This gives us a hint for what No Way Home will be about. If the public already sees Spidey as a menace or undesirable, the rumors about him needing representation from Matt Murdock may well be true.

[Gallowglass]

The properties Sony has to play with are different than the ones MCU has in that there aren't that many natural "lead" characters worth their own movie franchise

You have Venom and then... Morbius?

I mean, I'll never understand why there haven't been Black Cat or Silver Sable movies, beyond the apparent and obvious reluctance to make female fronted properties. {scrubbed}

Personally, i think they've dropped the ball by not thinking outside the box. So many super hero movies end up being movies ABOUT the bad guy that the good guy just happens to appear in, so why not play into that. I though they were when they talked about a Sinister Six movie but it never materialized.

Why NOT make a Dr Octopus movie, or a Hobgoblin movie or a Kraven the Hunter movie rather than waiting for a Spiderman movie to "use" them?

They have Hammerhead, Kingpin, Rose and a host of "mafia" adjacent characters, why not make a Marvel... er Sony verse Godfather series?

[Psyren]

Kingpin's status is kind of weird. He's originally a Spidey villain (hence Sony being able to make him the big bad of ITTS) but Marvel was also able to use him extensively as the big bad for the Netflix Daredevil series. Maybe there's limits to what one side or the other can do with him.

As for the other gangster villains... Hammerhead is probably the only one that might be recognizable, and they work better as ascended goons or mini-bosses for street-level heroes like Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones etc to take on, or at best one-off gags for someone like Spidey to quickly dispatch. Once you start hitting even the bottom rung of A-Tier like Falcon or Hawkeye they get dealt with extremely quickly.

Anyway, Morbius himself is pretty obscure, but my guess is that if he takes off they'll be able to make use of him in Blade.

[Talakeal]

The properties Sony has to play with are different than the ones MCU has in that there aren't that many natural "lead" characters worth their own movie franchise

You have Venom and then... Morbius?

I mean, I'll never understand why there haven't been Black Cat or Silver Sable movies, beyond the apparent and obvious reluctance to make female fronted properties. {scrubbed}

Personally, i think they've dropped the ball by not thinking outside the box. So many super hero movies end up being movies ABOUT the bad guy that the good guy just happens to appear in, so why not play into that. I though they were when they talked about a Sinister Six movie but it never materialized.

Why NOT make a Dr Octopus movie, or a Hobgoblin movie or a Kraven the Hunter movie rather than waiting for a Spiderman movie to "use" them?

They have Hammerhead, Kingpin, Rose and a host of "mafia" adjacent characters, why not make a Marvel... er Sony verse Godfather series?

They were setting Felicity Jones up for a Black Cat movie when ASM2 failed.

Damn shame.

[Rater202]

Apparently the official name for Sony's comic film universe is not SUMAC but SPUMC.

(So was that actually Vulture, i.e. MCU Vulture, at the end?)

Matt Smith is apparently playing

Spoiler

Show

some Marvel baddie named Loxias Crown, aka Hunger. Another vampire, and apparently evil-er than Morbius, so apparently we're doing the "villain is dark(er) reflection of the hero" formulaic solo origin story here that I was hoping against hope Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel had broken us free from. More's the pity.

To be fair, Morbius doesn't actually have that many villains.

Re: Blade.

Morbius and Blade actually have a distinct connection in the comics.

Blade originally appeared in Tomb of Dracula as a vampire hunter... But being a dhampir didn't actually give him many special abilities. There was no "all of the power, none of the weakness" thing. He had better night vision than the average human and he couldn't be infected with vampirism and that was it, he was in all other ways a normal human being.

It helps that he was "half-vampire" because his mother was attacked, fed on, and killed by a vampire while she was giving birth to him rather than actually having a vampire parent.

Then th 90s Animated Seiries happened, brought blade in a part of the Morbius arc, and depicted him as having vampire powers but none of their weaknesses... Except for a hunger for blood that he needed a serum to treat.

And then the Wesley Snipes movies that were based on that depiction of Blade.

So, in the comics after a while Morbius's condition became contagious and he infected a few other people after losing control of himself. One of the people he infected was Blade, and Blade's latent vampirism sort of woke up and either fought off or assimilated Morbius's contagion and that's how he became the Daywalker in the comics.

Since we know that there's an MCU Blade in the works, that would be the way to tie the only properties to the MCU. Exploit the Morbius-Blade connection.

[Peelee]

That said, I had fun with Solo despite its many, many issues.

I don't think Solo was a good movie. I definitely think Solo was a fun movie. Which, for me, is good enough.

Also, I know virtually nothing about Jared Leto, and it would at least be nice to see him in a role where he wasn’t being judged on impossible expectations. Here he has the opportunity to create a character with much less of that.

Check out Lord of War. Not only is it an absolutely fantastic movie*, but Leto does a great job in it. I have no issues going to see a movie with him in it, it'll be make or break depending on the script, director, and producer. If they give him gold, he returns more gold. If they give him a crappy Joker, hell return more crappy Joker. Can't fault him too much forbthat



*with terrifying trivia, like how one of the arms dealers Yuri is based on was an advisor and when he heard about the price of prop guns, offered to rent the studio real guns for cheaper, effectively making even more money on the same guns he was selling later anyway, as well as getting NATO concerned over a scene where the script needed hundreds of tanks lined up, so he said "I can do that with tanks too, cheaper than buying or making the props, just get the scene done fast, they're sold and being sent off at week's end". There's a reason he's a top gunrunner, I'd imagine. Dude double dips on his own stuff with zero negatives.

Tl;dr - virtually every weapon or armed vehicle you see in the movie is 100% ****ing real. And in this movie, there's a lot of them.

[Kitten Champion]

To my knowledge the way Sony and Marvel/Disney's deal works is they only share Spider-Man specifically. When Mahershala Ali's Blade hits the MCU they aren't going to use him to support a rival film studio's film franchise, unless they cut another deal for whatever reason.

Honestly, I think Morbius would've done better without the MCU in much the same way Wesley Snipe's Blade did as they could do their own worldbuilding tailored to the character. They're boxing themselves into a continuity they don't really control beyond a few Spider-Man related bullet points.

Let's say they want to go in the direction of Magic and have him fight a sorcerer villain of some kind -- Marvel/Disney controls the majority of that aspect of the universe and have already shaped it to fit their own movies.

Let's say they want to go in the direction of undead vampire-vampires -- Marvel/Disney controls the majority of that aspect of the universe and when they reboot Blade into it they're going to direct it in a way that works for their property.

Let's say they want to go in the direction of horror monsters, which is much of what Morbius is into as far as I'm aware -- Marvel/Disney controls the majority of that aspect of the universe and could bust out a Elsa Bloodstone {or whatever) movie/streaming series and use all the Marvel monster properties they want.

Given that, it's not at all surprising that Venom's only fighting other Symbiotes or Morbius is fighting other Morbiuses. They - Sony that is - control what Symbiotes and Living Vampires are in their snippet of reality, but not much else really.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Probably because the movie got delayed until next year; also it’s a SUMaC movie so same universe as Venom, and thus its status in regards to the MCU is...iffy.

I’m only familiar with the 90’s Spider-man incarnation of the character, so all I can say with any certainty is that he won’t have the cartoon character’s lovely accent, nor will he be shouting ‘Felicia!’ at any point during the movie because I gather he has a different love interest in it. It’s also too soon to see if he’ll be sucking plasma with his hands or biting like a normal vampire, but I gather the former was a censorship thing anyway. I’m going to miss the accent though.

The former was indeed due to censorship, but honestly the lamprey hands made him scarier then if he just bit you like a normal vampire.