Morbius currently sits at 17% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of the worst-reviewed comic book movies of all time. With a 70% Audience Score, there appears to be some disconnect between moviegoers and critics, though many fans appear to be disappointed with the Living Vampire's big screen debut.
All of Sony Pictures' non-Marvel Studios produced Marvel movies have received the dreaded green splat on Rotten Tomatoes, but that hasn't stopped the Venom franchise from finding box office success! In the case of Morbius, however, its opening weekend has proved to be similarly disappointing.
Insider recently spoke to director Daniel Espinosa and asked whether he pays any attention to what critics are saying, mentioning that his movie currently has a lowly 17% score.
"When I did my first feature it was a small movie called 'Babylon Disease,'" he began. "I remember one day going home on the subway and I had a few drinks so I was a bit drunk. Someone nudged me on the train and said, 'I have to tell you what's wrong with the second scene in your feature' and I was like, 'Well, okay.' The point I'm making is it's a strange thing to make something so public."
"Look, I have a lot of self-hatred so I have a lot of criticism of my own work," Espinosa continued, seemingly referring specifically to Morbius. "I'm always trying to focus on being better. But I am also proud of what I do. There are parts in all of my movies that I'm really proud of."
We wouldn't be surprised if the filmmaker was a little more open about his experience down the line, as it's clear this movie went through a lot of changes. Tonnes of scenes from the trailers are missing, many of which suggest that Morbius was once a very diffrent film to the one we all saw. Espinosa appears to be supportive of the movie, so there's a chance he is happy with the finished product.
What did you think about Morbius?
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scenes in the Morbius trailers missing from the movie!
8. Everything And Anything Involving Adrian Toomes
Michael Keaton's Adrian Toomes appears in all three trailers, and it's only in the final one that we actually get a scene from the movie itself (and even then, the dialogue is totally different).
Piecing these together, it seems Michael Morbius was, at some point, going to be transported in the back of a police van before bumping into Toomes. They seem to have already met by then, and we can't help but wonder if a couple of different moments have been spliced together to look like one here. Regardless, The Vulture seems keen for the Living Vampire to stay in touch with him.
We can only assume an earlier version of Morbius saw Spider-Man's world combined with the Venomverse, meaning Toomes had been imprisoned there all this time (some sort of retcon would have no doubt cut any MCU ties). The fact that No Way Home changed things probably explains why the only surviving scene is Adrian being led out of jail by the cops, though it's clearly been altered.
7. Michael Morbius Goes Missing
In Morbius, Michael rents out a cargo ship and some mercenaries so that he and Martine Bancroft can conduct their experiments on him in international waters. After being transformed into a Living Vampire, he tears through the place and makes short work of those rather unlikeable goons. With that, he radios for help, leaves Martine to be rescued, and jumps overboard to, uh, swim home.
The authorities eventually come to the conclusion that Michael must have been there, but it seems there was once a different plan. In this exchange between the good doctor and Tyrese Gibson's FBI Agent Stroud, we learn the scientist has been missing for two months and wasn't seen again until the aforementioned cargo ship washed ashore on Long Island. That's a pretty massive change.
Clearly, Morbius' origin story played out quite differently in an earlier version of the movie, and this could explain why the scene at the beginning with the vampire bats feels so completely out of place.
6. Oscorp
It's clear from the post-credits scenes that sweeping changes were made in the wake of Spider-Man: No Way Home's release, and we can't help but think Sony Pictures once planned for this movie to be the first we'd see of Tom Holland's web-slinger in their version of the Marvel Universe.
That's a more frightening thought than being on the receiving end of Morbius' fangs, but we also have a sneaky suspicion that they'd use the Multiverse to create a world that borrowed elements from all three Spider-Man franchises. In this shot, we see The Amazing Spider-Man's Oscorp - a location that definitely wasn't in this movie - leaving us with a long list of questions for the studio.
The only world these Marvel movies would arguably work in is the Amazing one, but perhaps this was just thrown in to mislead us all prior to No Way Home's debut in theaters? We also can't discount the possibility that Morbius worked for Oscorp before it was changed to Horizon Labs.
5. Tyrese's Robo-Arm
We'll talk more about this sequence a little later, but it wasn't in the movie...and neither was Stroud's robotic arm. For nearly all his scenes, Tyrese keeps his hand in his pocket, and it's not until the very end of Morbius that we see his cybernetic enhancements (which we're pretty sure weren't quite as in your face as the screenshot above). Even then, it's only in passing and doesn't actually tease anything.
In one shot in Martine's lab, there is a cybernetic arm on display, so common sense says this might have once been a major subplot in the movie. As it stands, though, Stroud is just a generic FBI agent and Tyrese isn't given any of the superhero action he previously teased in interviews.
Morbius doesn't exactly have a massive runtime (it's only a few minutes longer than Venom: Let There Be Carnage), but maybe something just didn't work with Tyrese's performance? He's always been a fun presence in the Fast & Furious movies, and nothing we did see was by any means bad.
4. Conversation Between Friends
This exchange between Dr. Michael Morbius and Dr. Emil Nicholas was featured in all three trailers, but doesn't make it into the movie itself. It appears the Living Vampire's father figure was looking to point him in the right direction here, likely serving as more of a mentor to the Nobel Prize winner.
While Nicholas still plays a key role in Morbius, it's primarily in Milo's life as he attempts to steer him in the right direction, ultimately losing his life at that vampire's hands.
There is a key moment between Michael and Emil here, though it does feel a lot like Sony at some point shifted the focus of the movie to concentrate more on the latter's dynamic with Milo. Perhaps they hoped to make Matt Smith's villain a more well-balanced character? It didn't really work as he was one of the worst parts of the film, and it was baffling to see Milo prioritised over Morbius.
3. Action Scene In The Woods
Between this, the shot of Stroud, and police cars racing through a park, it definitely seems as if a huge set piece in the woods was once going to feature in Morbius. We don't see enough to come to any sort of real conclusion about what that looked like, but it's odd to see something this major scrapped.
If we're going to throw out a theory, it would be that this is where the Living Vampire ended up battling the FBI (and Stroud, in particular) with Martine attempting to step in and save Michael.
Whether this was the movie's original ending is up for debate, and it's certainly feasible that the CG-heavy final battle with Milo was a product of reshoots. It's possible this will end up in Morbius' deleted scenes, as a lot of content was clearly shot for a sequence that's ended up on the cutting room floor.
2. Bitten By A Vampire?
Throughout Morbius, Stroud can be seen with a nasty scar on his neck that's never explained. Did he have a run-in with one of the movie's vampires that we never got to see? It's a possibility, but as the FBI agent tells Michael he's a hero here, it becomes clear they once had a very different dynamic.
What we saw was a relatively simple story of Stroud suspecting Morbius might be the killer they're looking for before doggedly pursuing him. This scene suggests that he was actually among those encouraging Michael to be a hero rather than a villain, a plot thread that was M.I.A from the final cut.
Prior to Morbius' release, Tyrese seemed extremely enthusiastic about joining the Marvel Universe and even suggested he would be in the MCU. The fact that he didn't do a single interview to promote its release tells us something went wrong. and most of his scenes ended up being completely scrapped.
1. Spider-Man
While a version of this scene does exist in Morbius, there's no sign of the graffiti labelling Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man a killer. It was always strange to see this screenshot from the Spider-Man video game in the trailers and appears to be another remnant of Sony's plans to bring Tom Holland's web-slinger into this world (presumably after their relationship with Marvel Studios fell apart).
Was Holland going to replace Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man in that world, all while wearing Tobey's costume? We wouldn't put anything past Sony, but there's every chance this was just a placeholder.
Either way, it's massively misleading for the studio to have marketed Morbius with a Spider-Man tease like this, only for the wall-crawler to be a complete non-factor in the movie. We're pleased he wasn't in many ways, but can't help but wonder what the real story is behind this scrapped "cameo."