This is an origin story for the character and how he became the living vampire. As a child, Michael Morbius had a blood disorder that crippled him and so he dedicated his life to finding a cure. As a child in the hospital, he made a good friend, whom he called Milo, and they remained friends as they grew up and lived their lives.

Michael Morbius becomes a doctor and works hard to find a cure for the disease. As adults, Michael searched for a cure, while Milo funded his research. Along the way, Morbius creates artificial blood and wins a Nobel prize for that work.

Morbius comes up with an hypothesis to use vampire bats as a way to create a serum that works to cure the disease that he and Milo have. The hypothesis has promise and Dr. Morbius goes to Costa Rica to capture dangerous vampire bats for research.

Morbius creates and tests various incarnations of a possible cure, until eventually he finds one that works with mice. He injects himself with the serum and finds that it does cure his disease, but it also gives him a curse. Michael Morbius becomes a living vampire that craves human blood and kills to get it. Morbius is able to use the artificial blood at first but it doesn’t have the same long term effect that real human blood does and so he constantly craves human blood.

This creates the conflict within himself, as a doctor he has sworn to do no harm, but yet has to harm others for himself to live.

Milo catches wind of his success and eventually steals the serum for himself, but he doesn’t have the same principles as Morbius and so he begins to kill others to satiate his desires. At first people think that it’s Michael Morbius that is doing the killing. The police are after Morbius, and do arrest him, but Morbius escapes to deal with Milo.

This is the main conflict of the last half of the movie, friend against friend in a battle to do the right thing. As Morbius and Milo attack each other and try to verbally convince the other of their perspective and why they are right, one of their good mutual friends is killed by Milo. Morbius knows that Milo has gone over the edge and needs to be stopped. Then Milo goes after Morbius’ girlfriend and she is killed by Milo, after this Morbius that Milo won’t stop until he is killed. Morbius is able to stop Milo by injecting him with a different serum he created that will reverse the effects of the original serum causing Milo to die.

The overall feel of the movie was dark, with some horror elements, and there were some jump scares to look out for.

This film is not your usual Disney Marvel comic book movie, however it’s similar the Sony Marvel Venom movies. And the events from Venom are vaguely referenced in the story, and Morbius even tells someone that he is Venom at some point. As a result of the dark and scary take on this movie a lot of critics gave negative reviews for the film. The vampire element is strong and this is a vampire movie not a superhero movie.

After Credits:

There are two after credit scenes involving Vulture (Michael Keaton) from Spider-Man: Homecoming and it shows how he is brought in to this movie. He teams up with Morbius to convince him to go after Spider-Man. Which Spider-Man they are talking about isn’t revealed and I’m assuming will be revealed at a future time in a future after credit scene.

I enjoyed the different angle that this movie took for the Marvel Universe and if it is setting up confrontations between Spider-Man, and Blade, and others then I think this is a good start. I would rather have the villain have it’s own complex journey than the villain just be a side story or afterthought to the hero story. Which has historically been Disney Marvel’s formula for villain development and has always left me wanting for a good villain throughout those movies.

We saw the same thing with the Venom movies that did the same thing, which was a movie about the origin story of the anti-hero/villain.

Morbius is the living vampire and is considered an anti-hero, and is an enemy to Spider-Man and Blade. In Marvel comic book history, Morbius originally bit Bade giving him his powers, but then this was changed and now Blade was born with his powers due to his mother being bit by a vampire while he was in utero. Also, Blade has killed Morbius in the past, but in true comic book fashion, Morbius was resurrected and is still around today.

Spider-Man/Peter Parker has been on loan to Disney Marvel for the past few years. Now Sony is trying to capitalize on the Spider-verse.

Michael Morbius is a Marvel character whose rights are owned by Sony Pictures. Spider-Man is also a Sony Pictures character. They are enemies. Venom is in the same boat as Morbius.

Sony is developing more movies based on the Marvel characters they own. Venom and Morbius are the first to be released. COVID delayed this film for a couple of years. Initial release date for this film was July 10, 2020. The same thing happened with Black Widow, WW84, Eternals, Top Gun, etc. As a result, my interest in these shows decreased.

But I’m glad to finally have seen this movie in the theaters. I thought it was enjoyable and am hoping this is a set up for future appearances of Morbius in the Marvel movies.

Listen or watch our podcast review for a more in depth conversation of Morbius and what The Credible Nerds thought of this film!