The Morbius Scene That Went Too Far

Contains spoilers for "Morbius"

In a film about a morally complex vampire hero, "Morbius" is littered with scenes that go too far, but not necessarily in ways you'd expect. For example, most scenes involving blood merely depict Jared Leto's Dr. Michael Morbius sucking on the red stuff like a chilled Capri-Sun, with very few splashes landing anywhere else. In fact, gore levels barely go past a scratched stomach. There are, however, key scenes in this latest chapter of the Spider-Verse that lean all the way into bad habits that other comic book movies have been guilty of in the past.

This particular cardinal sin is one that movies like "Venom," "Black Panther" and "Man of Steel" have committed in their respective battles between good and evil, and it's no doubt something that has caused you to roll your eyes in the theater on more than one occasion. We're, of course, referring to the tired, old formula of having two similarly-looking characters knock the computer-generated snot out of one another in the film's final act. And, unfortunately, in its epic vampire-on-vampire final showdown, "Morbius" delivers a particularly rough version of that scene that pushes the levels of incomprehension too far. 

Morbius obtains many fancy tricks after becoming a vampire, but it's his super-speed and agility that are portrayed in a particularly frustrating manner. Shown with a colored smoke-like trail that floods the screen as he incapacitates his foes, it's akin to the Nightcrawler BAMF effect from the "X-Men" movies but worse. It is almost impossible to follow Leto's character in an action sequence or gain any bearings of where or what we're looking at. The final battle between Morbius and his friend-turned-foe is perhaps the movie's biggest offender.

Matt Smith's Milo being an evenly matched opponent turns this climactic scene into a CGI-riddled mess that cranks everything up to 11. It's an understandable effort to show how fast these two are, but factoring in the various elements at play in the sequence, it's like watching two flares being ignited and thrown around a construction site. You can barely see what's happening, and the incomprehensible action detracts from the level of drama the finale is aiming for. Instead, it's just another prime example of how smashing two similar-looking action figures together does not make for a good fight sequence. Here's hoping they learn to turn the dials down a bit if Morbius returns in future Spider-Verse films.