Contributor Enrico Versace: MORBIUS- Not Your Common Vampire

Much like Dracula Untold, Director Daniel Espinosa‘s MORBIUS tries to take what you know about vampires and put a new spin on it. Only it does a better job. I would put it in the same category as the first Venom movie, but maybe that’s just me. There’s a lot of movies and books that have tried to do this in the 21st Century – Twilight, Fledgling, and maybe it’s fair to count Blade, that trilogy may have started at the end of the 90s, but had its last two films in the 00’s. Like the western genre, the vampire genre has been around for a long time, even longer than westerns actually. So it would make sense to spice things up a bit to keep the audience intrigued. Not to mention, this film and its protagonist also has obvious similarities to the classic story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Like most vampires Morbius (Jared Leto) has fangs and a hunger for blood, but he also can fly.  Typically, vampire retellings try to shy away from turning into and flying like a bat, but Morbius embraced it, probably because of the comics of course, where he has to keep up with heroes like Spider-Man. The movie doesn’t give much of a clear explanation for it, but what we do know is he can only glide after drinking blood and it might have something to do with the vibrations of objects or him being as light as a feather. Like Spider-Man and many of his villains in the comics, he is a cross-species hybrid. He even feels at one with bats and can summon them, much again like Dracula Untold.

Other common traits like having a weakness to silver, a wooden stake, a cross, and being unable to go out in sunlight have been abandoned, with nothing but maybe a few little jokes this movie glances over. Which again, Morbius was never your common vampire, especially when he was trying to suck plasma from people in the Spider-Man 90s Animated Series because the show couldn’t refer to consuming blood.

That series, like the comics, has Morbius’ origin more entwined with Spider-Man. Parker’s spider half of his DNA wasn’t stabilizing and he wanted to study his own blood for a cure before it got worse. Somehow Morbius found it and was curious as to why he even had such a sample of blood. He didn’t have a rare blood disease in that show, instead his town had a virus and everyone was suffering and dying, so he swore to go to America and find a cure. While examining Parker’s blood, a vampire bat Morbius had for his earlier studies on the disease, escaped from a cage and landed on it. Morbius pushed it away in anger and it bit him, turning him into the vampire-like creature we’re familiar with. Whereas in this movie his transformation comes about from his experimental serum on a ship in international waters.

One thing that Morbius does have in at least any story I’ve seen him in, which not many vampires possess, is his humanity. Unlike the antagonist and sort of brother to him in the movie Milo (Matt Smith), Morbius clings on to what little of his humanity he has left, trying hard not to become a monster. Milo grew up suffering at a hospital, bullied, and didn’t have the intelligence and good fortune that his friend Morbius did, which is why he has no qualms about  killing and giving “normal” people a taste of his own misfortune. It’s through Milo that we see just how much humanity Morbius still has.

It’s a little disappointing that this Morbius  origin story had to be so separate from his tales with Spider-Man, but anything is possible, we might get them in a film together in the future. Hopefully the creators of the movie will heed some constructive criticism or most-likely the SSU has this already planned. Which is why I personally don’t agree with most of the negative reviews the film is receiving. No matter how this character joined the mix of Marvel films we have today, I’m glad he did. Like previously examined, he is a vampire-like character almost unlike anyone else and I hope the hate the film has received won’t cease any chance of revising him.   Enrico’s LAMB rating:  3.5 outta 5

See other Contributions from Enrico Versace –
THE ETERNALS  & THE FUTURE OF SPIDER-MAN

My name is Enrico Versace. I graduated from Rowan University with a bachelor’s degree in Writing Arts. I have a personal blog where I’ve written more analyses like this about movies, art, horror, and Star Wars. I wasn’t always a writer though fun fact. I used to be into architecture and built with Legos from when I was a kid to after high school. You can find my blog posts at wrtversacee4.wordpress.com. And my social torusbrusk1138 on Instagram.