![Morbius is less entertaining than Venom [critique]](http://www.premiere.fr/sites/default/files/styles/partage_rs/public/2022-03/morbius-vignette-04-01-2022_0900995441.jpg "Morbius is less entertaining than Venom [critique]")
Marvel’s “vampire”, played by Jared Leto, lacks teeth.
“If you expect disappointment then you can never be truly disappointed“, repeated MJ (Zendaya) in No Way Home. It is exactly with this state of mind that we approached Morbiusthe third film in “Sony’s Spider-Man Universe” and Marvel’s first adaptation of the character, 24 years after his cut cameo in Blade. Especially after seeing Venom and its sequel, Venom : Let There Be Carnagecarried by a freewheeling Tom Hardy.
Warning, this review contains slight spoilers for the film (but not for the ending or the post-credits scenes)
It is also with great curiosity that we wanted to discover this film with its chaotic production, the shooting of which ended in 2019 and which has continued to be postponed due to the health crisis. Curiosity to see Jared Leto come back in a comic book movieafter the painful memory of his passage as a Joker butchered during the editing in the Suicide Squad by David Ayer. Curiosity to find him simply headlining a big-budget film, a first in the career of this star with an atypical profile, generally confined to second or even third roles,Alexandre (2004) at Blade Runner 2049 (2017) via House of Gucci (2021). After all, that’s how he won an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Clubin 2014, for what will undoubtedly remain the peak of his career with Requiem for a dream.
–
Leto tightens up
With the memory of Tom Hardy devouring a live lobster in Venom, we feared as much as we hoped to find a Leto in total overplay. There was potential with this character of a scientist who turns into a vampire while trying to cure himself of a rare disease using bat blood. Surprise, the 50-year-old actor (who is 15 years younger) is surprisingly sober in the skin of Morbius, perhaps even too much, leaving his partner Matt Smith the role of the head actor. The former Doctor Who said a few days ago that he was not sure who he was playing in the film. And it shows. The motivations and backstory of her character, Loxias Crown, are not sufficiently explained. Childhood friend of Michael Morbius suffering from the same affliction, he secretly administers his “remedy” and immediately becomes a bloodthirsty monster, unlike Morbius who tries to control his new murderous impulses.
This is the case with Daniel Espinosa’s film (Life: Origin unknown), written and edited with so little care that one constantly wonders about the logic of events and the sequence of scenes that compose it. If Jared Harris is correct as a mentor, we remain amazed by the romance with Adria Arjona, which enters the story like a hair in the soup, while the duo of cops led by a Tyrese Gibson escaped from Fast and Furious conspicuous by its uselessness. An impression that pursues us into the slipped easter eggs here and there, and the post-credits scenes, among the least inspired that we have seen in a superhero film (we will come back to this in another paper).
Sorely lacking in originality, including in its special effects (pseudo bullet time in 2022, seriously?), Morbius suffers from the same ailments as his big brother Venom. Namely those of a super villain who is made up as an anti-hero, by roughly emphasizing his duality and his absence of responsibility, while dressing him up as a caricatural antagonist to show that he is not so bad after all. Except that Venom made at least the effort to entertain us by daring to be ridiculous, where Morbius looks desperately serious and painful.
–
