Morbius plot leaves vampires thirsty

Despite Leto’s star turn and the thrilling special effects, Morbius is one of the weaker additions to the Marvel family.

Morbius (Oscar winner Jared Leto) has a rare blood disorder that renders him barely able to walk and will shorten his lifespan. Until he discovers a cure with a curse

Morbius (M)
In cinemas
★★★

After a slow but interesting start centred on the childhood and then work of Dr Michael Morbius, an unorthodox biochemist who wins and rejects the Nobel Prize, Morbius quickly and dramatically asserts itself as a Marvel movie.

Morbius (Oscar winner Jared Leto) has a rare blood disorder that renders him barely able to walk and will shorten his lifespan. So does his childhood friend Milo (a scene stealing Matt Smith).

Morbius is lauded for creating artificial blood. Now he wants to go a step further and, with the help of Martine (Adria Arjona), a fellow doctor and potential romantic interest, blend the DNA of humans and vampire bats.

“Why am I still alive if not to fix this?’’ he asks her. He sort of answers that question not long afterwards when, under interrogation in a police cell, he warns, “I am starting to get hungry. You don’t want to see me when I get hungry.”

The Marvel moment, however, precedes that. Morbius and Martine are on a ship, in international waters, conducting their illegal experiment and the crew of thugs starts hassling them.

Morbius self-injects his serum and, in a flash, goes from a frail man with walking sticks to a superhuman being with fangs and claws and a thirst for blood.

He is Dracula, in effect, but without the hindrances the Transylvanian faced, and there’s a good joke about that. He can go out in daylight, for example.

However, Morbius does not want to exsanguinate living people. He prefers to drink white – the artificial blood he created – rather than red.

He’s tried red, from the blood bank, and when Martine asks him about its impact, he says it unleashes something primal that “wants to hunt and wants to kill”.

When Milo learns of the “cure” he steals and takes the serum and decides he far prefers to drink red. The rest of this thinly plotted movie, directed by Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa and written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (who co-wrote Dracula Untold in 2014), is about Morbius trying to stop Milo.

Morbius first appeared in a 1971 Spider-Man comic. He started as a villain but developed into an antihero. This 104-minute film adaptation, part of Marvel’s Spider-Man Universe, goes down that path, but not particularly effectively.

It’s held together by Leto and Smith. The latter is best known as the 11th Dr Who and as Prince Philip in The Crown. Leto is an amazing actor but this time around it’s Smith who grabs the attention.

A scene where he soft shoes after dealing with six police officers took this viewer to Joaquin Phoenix’s stair dance in Joker (2019), the best film to emerge from the Marvel and DC comic book empires.

Aside from the watchable leads, and the sometimes thrilling special effects and cinematography (Oliver Wood), especially when vampire bats are on the loose, Morbius doesn’t have a lot to offer.

As an aside, the FBI duo investigating who is sucking the life out of people are two of the most pointless G-men in cinema history. No fault of the actors, Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal. They do their best with the little they have to work with.

In the end, this movie feels like some heavy stitching to help turn the Spider-Man Universe, which includes Tom Hardy’s vigilante Venom, into a patchwork quilt. The mandatory post-credits scene, featuring Michael Keaton, who has appeared in the Marvel wide web, suggests this is the case.

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The Bad Guys (PG)
In cinemas
★★★½

I was in the cultural aisles of Kmart the other day and saw a boy, aged five or so, looking at The Bad Guys books by Australian author Aaron Blabey.

Who’s your favourite Bad Guy?, I asked. He did not blink. “Mr Wolf!” You shock me not, I told him. Mr Wolf is every boy’s favourite, and doesn’t he know it.

He oozes renegade charm from every fur follicle in the terrific opening sequence to the animated feature The Bad Guys, made by DreamWorks, which is apt as it’s a dream come true for the Bendigo-born actor (his TV debut was in the medical drama GP) turned author.

Mr Wolf is tall, lean and wolfishly handsome. He wears a white suit and drives a black muscle car. He’s suave and cavalier. “We may be bad but we’re so good at it.”

He makes me think of Steve McQueen but we’re in more modern times so there’s a neat joke, when he switches on the lupine charm, about him going the “full Clooney”.

That comparison is also more deliberate: there are moments in this cheeky crime thriller comedy, such as split screens, that nod to the Ocean’s 11 franchise.

Mr Wolf, voiced by Oscar winner Sam Rockwell, is the brains of a gang of thieves. That rapid-fire opening sees them doing a normal day’s work: robbing a bank and speeding off with the police in hot pursuit. Car chases are the best bit, Mr Wolf tells us.

This “nefarious fivesome” includes Mr Shark (Craig Robinson), a master of disguise who stole the Mona Lisa while dressed as the Mona Lisa, Mr Snake (Marc Maron), a “Houdini with no arms”, Mr Piranha (Anthony Ramos), a “loose cannon with a short fuse”, and Ms Tarantula (Awkwafina), who – yes, you guessed it – is a hacker who commands the world wide web.

The two other important characters are the new governor, Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz), who vows to put the Bad Guys behind bars, and the rich (definitely) philanthropist (allegedly) Professor Rupert Marmalade IV (Richard Ayoade, in a star voice turn), who plans to turn the Bad Guys into Good Guys.

“There’s a flower of goodness inside all of us just waiting to blossom,’’ declares Professor Marmalade, who, by the by, is a guinea pig. As her name suggests, the new governor is a fox, and we know how Janus-faced the vulvines can be.

This entertaining movie is directed by French animator Pierre Perifel, who is a Dreamworks regular. It’s his first feature. The script is by Etan Cohen – writer of two hilarious films, Idiocracy (2006) and Tropic Thunder (2008) – and Hilary Winston, who was a producer on the clever TV series My Name is Earl.

It starts with verve and flair but runs out of puff over 100 minutes. The voice cast is great and the animation is DreamWorks level but the story trails off.

Blabey has written 14 Bad Guys books but this movie is an origin story of sorts. Can Bad Guys become Good Guys?

I suspect that left the filmmakers with too few pages to work with. I also think the script lacks the laid-back comic feints of the books.

But that’s only the view of someone who sees Mr Wolf behind the wheel and thinks back to 1968 and Bullitt. My teen son, who loves the books, rates the movie higher than I do.

The music is by the Oscar-nominated Daniel Pemberton and the target audience, like that five-year-old I chatted to, were bopping in their seats at the Sydney premiere, which the author attended.

And good on him. Next up, one of his picture book creations, Thelma the Unicorn, is set to roll off the Netflix production line.

A scene from The Bad Guys