Morbius (2022 Film)

About

Morbius is the Sony Pictures movie starring actor Jared Leto as the Marvel Comics character Dr. Morbius, a scientist who develops superhuman and vampire-like abilities from a drug he develops trying to cure his rare blood disease. Upon release at the beginning of April 2022, the film was widely panned by reviewers, leading to humorous reviews, jokes and parodies about its quality, with the ironic hashtag #MorbiusSweep going viral in early April 2022 and the catchphrase It's Morbin' Time following shortly after.

History

In May 2017, Sony announced a plan to craft a cinematic universe around Spider-Man characters,^[1] beginning with Venom. The next film in the universe is Morbius, which began filming in 2019.^[2] The film was directed by Daniel Espinosa. The first trailer for the film premiered on January 13th, 2020 (shown below), and the film was initially slated for a July 2020 release. However, complications in the film industry related to the COVID-19 pandemic pushed back the release date of the film multiple times before it was finally released on April 1st, 2022.^[3]

Reception

Morbius was critically panned upon release, receiving paltry aggregate scores of 15 percent on Rotten Tomatoes^[4] and 36 percent on Metacritic.^[5] Variety's^[6] Owen Gleiberman derided the film as generic, writing "'Morbius' is a movie in which it’s clear that no one ever sent the script back for a rewrite with the instructions, 'Please add a script.' As in: Add spice, add dialogue, add something so that the movie plays like more than a barely colored-in diagram." ABC's^[7] Peter Travers wrote "'Morbius' is the ghost of an effective horrorfest overwhelmed by an elephantine budget, botched suspense and the need to brag, especially during the shameless, sequel-begging end credits, that it is Spider-Man adjacent."

Online Presence

On social media, fans seemed to agree that the film was not good and largely reveled in its failure. On March 31st, Twitter user @ericszyszka^[8] posted a picture of an empty theater, joking "Morbius fever has gripped the nation," gaining over 2,600 retweets and 38,000 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below, left). That same day, Twitter user @fellawhomstdve^[9] mocked a picture of Leto surprising the "Morbius Discord community," gaining over 5,800 retweets and 94,000 likes in a similar timeframe (shown below, right).

Troll Reviews

Prior to the film's release, community reviewers on sites like Google and Metacritic wrote troll reviews of the film, sarcastically hyping the film's quality and expressing amazement at cameos that do not happen. For example, Google reviewer Lucas Choi wrote:

The movie has little to no flaws whatsoever, and the CGI and visual effects were so spectacular that I creamed in the cinemas. And let's not forget the scene where Morbius and Batman meet. Breathtaking fight scene between the two, but Batman with prep always wins. And then Spider-Man, Superman and Batman having a threesome straight after single-handedly turned me on so much.

Reviewer Dark Saber wrote:

I almost passed away when it was revealed that Shrek is the main villain because he was angry that everyone was invading his swamp. My absolute favourite part of this film was when the Dracula from hotel Transylvania showed up and helped Morbius defeat Shrek.

Morbius Sweep

Morbius Sweep or #MorbiusSweep refers to a series of parody memes ironically celebrating Morbius as a massive commercial and critical success. Originating from the /r/moviecirclejerk subreddit, the trend gained a massive presence on Twitter in early April 2022 following the negative critic and audience reviews of the film.

It's Morbin' Time

It's Morbin' Time is a fictional catchphrase attributed to the title character in the 2022 superhero movie Morbius as part of the ongoing joke surrounding the film of inventing aspects of the movie. In addition to being a fictional line from the film, it has been used as titles in numerous Morbius memes on Reddit, particularly on the subreddit /r/whenthe.

Search Interest

External References