Honestly, I don’t think anyone expected Jared Leto’s Morbius to be anything close to an MCU-level critical success when it was released. However, now that the reviews for the film have come in, Morbius is actually one of the worst reviewed superhero films of the modern era, and it ranks among the lowest-rated films of all time.
Morbius currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 21 percent, which is an improvement from the 16 percent it had when I saw it last night, but it is still far lower than the majority of superhero films released in the last decade, with the exception of a couple. What it compares to are some absolutely bad masterpieces, as follows:
Batman VS Superman – 29%
Ghost Rider – 26%
Green Lantern – 26%
Suicide Squad (2016) – 26%
Blade Trinity – 25%
X-Men: Dark Phoenix – 22%
Morbius – 21%
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance – 18%
Batman and Robin – 12%
Jonah Hex – 12%
Elektra – 11%
Fantastic Four (2015) – 9%
Catwoman – 9%
As you can see, this is extremely rarefied air at this point. Alternatively, whatever the polar opposite of rarified air might be. The films listed above are some of the worst films ever made, and for the most part, they aren’t even in the “critics hated it but fans liked it” category, as was the case with Venom and its sequel (30 percent and 58 percent respectively). Although the results of the Morbius audience poll have not yet been released, I would be astonished if this character and Jared Leto received the same level of support as Tom Hardy’s zany Venom. Many Marvel fans are already angered by leaks from the film, for reasons that I will not go into here, but it appears to be a film that will be universally despised when it is released in theatres.
The reason Sony made a Morbius movie in the first place, and why they’re doing a lot of bizarre Spider-adjacent movies like Kraven and Madame Web, is because of a twisted licencing issue in which Sony is essentially forced to keep putting out Spider-Man IP movies or risk losing the rights to Marvel. While discussions with Marvel and Disney for Tom Holland’s Spidey and those films are still ongoing, Sony is required to have this’side world’ running at the same time as well. The scenario is bizarre, and while it has occasionally worked out successfully (see: Venom! ), Morbius may be a portent of an upcoming slate full of really terrible movies, unless they can find out a method to make these relatively unknown villains work onscreen.
We’ll have to wait and see how Morbius does at the box office, as well as what audiences think of the film. Normally, I’d expect scores to be higher than what the critics are claiming, but a high Venom level is surprising. I have my doubts. We’ll find out as soon as possible. Between this and his performance as the Joker, I don’t think many people will be interested in casting Jared Leto in any other superhero movies in the near future.
