YNOT at the Movies

When Covid-19 first surfaced, there was suspicion that the virus might have jumped from bats to humans. It's unclear if that theory was taken from Marvel Comics because there is no hard scientific evidence to back it up. The latest Marvel movie "Morbius" (USA 2020 | 104 min.), directed by Daniel Espinosa, also tells a story related to bats. After infusing bat's DNA into humans, humans are turned into bloodthirsty vampires. The end result is just as bad as the Covid-19 pandemic, if not worse.

The gravely ill Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who developed artificial blood to save people's lives. But he is also secretly working on an ethically questionable (i.e. morally wrong) project, hoping to cure his own rare blood disorder. With his assistance, Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), by his side, he illegally experiments attaching bat's DNA into human's.

After numerous tests of his DNA-manipulated serum on rats, Morbius's first human test is on himself, in a ship floating on international water in order to be out of any country's jurisdiction. After he injects the serum, he is transformed into a blood sucking monster that he does not have control over. But the positive side is that his illness is completely gone, he is no longer a cripple, and he looks fit and healthy unless his vampire side wins over to make him look like a skeleton.

When his childhood friend Milo (Matt Smith), who also suffers from a blood disorder, finds out about Morbius's serum, he takes it and becomes a super villain. Morbius now must minimize the damage caused by Milo.

For a Marvel movie, the beginning portion of the film is surprisingly easy to follow, perhaps because it's mostly told by Morbius in an audio diary style and explains all the details. But once humans become vampires, the story runs thinner and thinner, if anything is told at all. The movie simply just keeps repeating the fights between Morbius and Milo. Fortunately, unlike most other Marvel films that run over two and a half hours, this one is rather short (a good thing) as if it has nothing left to go on.

Jared Leto really doesn't need to do much to play the titular character, he can simply rely on the special effects to complete the transformation from a human to a scary looking Halloween mask. There is no explanation why the two good childhood friends would become enemies once they become vampires—one wants to enjoy his newly attained superpower and drink human blood, the other wants to be a good vampire and stop the other super villain.

Even though it lacks substance, this lighter-weight Marvel film reminds us how scary bats can be, regardless of whether they give us the Covid-19 virus.

"Morbius" opens on Friday, April 1, 2022.