After the enormous success of Joker, it seems we are in store for another villain movie, this time, from Marvel. Though, to be honest, this baby has been in the plans long before Joker came around. I am talking of course of Morbius. You would not know it from looking at the movie trailer, but Morbius is actually the name of one of Spiderman’s super villains. Making his debut in The Amazing Spider-Man #101 (1971), Morbius was created by writer Roy Thomas and designed by Gil Kane.
Comics Morbius went on to make many appearances in various comic books, and eventually, got to have more character depth, first becoming more of a tortured villain, and eventually an antihero. This, it’s important to point out, not unlike other villains in Spiderman’s world, who do not wish to be evil, but somehow—usually by means of an accident—find themselves in the superhero’s path. Morbius is no different.
Before transforming into Morbius the Living Vampire, the character is called Dr. Michael Morbius. An award-winning biochemist, who suffers from a life-threatening blood disease. In an attempt to save his life, the brilliant scientist performs experiments on himself. His last experiment afflicts him with a form of pseudo-vampirism. He gains some of the superhuman powers associated with the blood-sucking monsters from folklore, but with none of their weaknesses. Cured of his original illness Morbius suffers from a worse one – he now needs human blood to sustain himself.
To be honest, the convoluted soap opera which is Morbius’ adventures in the comics is not remarkably interesting. He fights Spiderman, he loses. He fights him again, under different circumstances, and loses again etc. etc. ad nauseam. What IS interesting is the upcoming movie, starring Jared Leto. What a wonderful casting call! Much like Vemom before it (Marvel, 2018), or Joker (DC, 2019) exists in a sort of comics-like limbo, in which superheroes do not exist. This gives the character much more room to develop, without being bound to the perpetual song-and-dance between superheroes and supervillains. Snorefest!
What we are left with looks like a fully developed horror-sci-fi movie, which also happens to be an origin story, and it looks so good! Let us just hope that what we have in store is not another ridiculous CGI fiasco like Venom was and more like Joker. Let us also hope that after the slap in the face that Leto got from DC, when he played the Joker in DC’s Suicide Squad, he will find a better home with Marvel.
Sadly, it seems that not only Morbius is cursed with a horrible illness, the movie, too, keeps being delayed due to Covid-19. The movie was set for release in July 2020, then March 2021, and now there are talks of further postponing the movies debut to October 2021, and possibly even January 2022.
For the time being, all we can do is enjoy the trailer, as we are stuck at home, and hope for Covid to go away and for Morbius to come, along with all the other movies we were supposed to get but didn’t, because of the pandemic.
